Tooke's _Considerations of the State of the Currency_, 1826, p. 47. THE FRENCH OCCUPATION OF SPAIN (1826). =Source.=--Martineau's _History of the Peace_, Vol. I. pp. 406-408. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons. It having been objected that the balance of dignity and honour among nations had been affected by the French occupation of Spain, which was thought to have exalted France and lowered England, Mr. Canning replied: "I must beg leave to say that I dissent from that averment. The House knows--the country knows--that when the French army was on the point of entering Spain, his Majesty's Government did all in their power to prevent it; that we resisted it by all means short of war. I have just now stated some of the reasons why we did not think the entry of that army into Spain a sufficient ground for war; but there was, in addition to those which I have stated, this peculiar reason, that whatever effect a war commenced upon the mere ground of the entry of a French army into Spain, might have, it probably would not have had the effect of getting that army out of Spain. In a war against France at that time as at any other, you might perhaps have acquired military glory; you might, perhaps, have extended your colonial possessions; you might even have achieved, at a great cost of blood and treasure, an honourable peace; but as to getting the French out of Spain, that would have been the one object which you almost certainly would not have accomplished. How seldom, in the whole history of the wars of Europe, has any war between two great powers ended in the obtaining of the exact, the identical object for which the war was begun! Besides, sir, I confess I think that the effects of the French occupation of Spain have been infinitely exaggerated. I do not blame those exaggerations, because I am aware that they are to be attributed to the recollections of some of the best times of our history; that they are the echoes of sentiments which, in the days of William and Anne, animated the debates and dictated the votes of the British Parliament. No peace was in those days thought safe for this country while the crown of Spain continued on the head of Bourbon; but were not the apprehensions of those days greatly overstated? Has the power of Spain swallowed up the power of maritime England? Or does England still remain, after the lapse of more than a century, during which the crown of Spain has been worn by a Bourbon, niched in the nook of that same Spain--Gibraltar?... Again, sir, is the Spain of the present day the Spain ... whose puissance was expected to shake England from her sphere? No, sir, it was quite another Spain; it was the Spain within the limits of whose empire the sun never set; it was Spain "with the Indies" that excited the jealousies, and alarmed the imaginations of our ancestors. But then, sir, the balance of power! The entry of the French army into Spain disturbed that balance, and we ought to