In opening the case the Judge-Advocate described it as being “the most important occasion, in the military history of the country, that ever called for inquiry of a nature like the present.” The expedition, he said, had not only totally failed, with the lamentable loss of a great proportion of the gallant army engaged in it, but it ended in the absolute surrender of those valuable advantages which the valour of British troops under another commander had previously acquired in the important post of _Monte Video_. “By this most unfortunate event,” he said, “all the hopes have been defeated which had been justly and generally entertained, of discovering new markets for our manufactures, of giving a wider scope to the spirit and enterprise of our merchants, of opening new sources of treasure, and new fields for exertion in supplying either the rude wants of countries emerging from barbarism, or the artificial and increasing demands of luxury and refinement, in those remote quarters of the globe. Important as these objects must be at all times to this country, the state of Europe, and the attempts that have been daily making to exclude us from our accustomed intercourse with the Continent, have added to the importance of these objects, and to the disappointment of these hopes. “The disappointment has been cruelly embittered by the disgrace which such a failure, under all the circumstances, has attached to the British arms. The diminution of our military fame must be felt at all times as a great national calamity, but at no period so severely as in this crisis of the world, when our military character has become more essential than ever, not merely for our honour or our glory, but for the independence, the liberties, the existence of Great Britain. It is, however, a great consolation, that whatever may have been the stain which our military renown has received, the conduct of the troops has had no share in producing it. I believe, the more this attack of the 5th of July is examined, the more clearly it will be found that no troops ever showed more courage; that no officers (with the exception of whatever may turn out to be connected with the subject of these charges, and I hope the result of this inquiry may prove the exception to be undeserved), but, with that exception, that no officers ever displayed more zeal, more conduct, more devotion of themselves to the common cause in the course of the most triumphant engagement, than was displayed by the British officers through the whole of that destructive day.... But it is not upon reports that these charges are founded; they rest upon better evidence. They are taken, not from idle talk or vain rumour, but the orders and despatches of General Whitelocke himself. There is not a fact