But--whatever plans be adopted--there can be no success, unless the execution be entrusted to Generals of competent judgement. That the British Army swarms with those who are incompetent--is too plain from successive proofs in the transactions at Buenos Ayres, at Cintra, and in the result of the Board of Inquiry.--Nor must we see a General appointed to command--and required, at the same time, to frame his operations according to the opinion of an inferior Officer: an injunction (for a recommendation, from such a quarter, amounts to an injunction) implying that a man had been appointed to a high station--of which the very persons, who had appointed him, deemed him unworthy; else they must have known that he would endeavour to profit by the experience of any of his inferior officers, from the suggestions of his own understanding: at the same time--by denying to the General-in-Chief the free use of his own judgement, and by the act of announcing this presumption of his incompetence to the man himself--such an indignity is put upon him, that his passions must of necessity be rouzed; so as to leave it scarcely possible that he could draw any benefit, which he might otherwise have drawn, from the local knowledge or talents of the individual to whom he was referred: and, lastly, this injunction virtually involves a subversion of all military subordination. In the better times of the House of Commons--a minister, who had presumed to write such a letter as that to which I allude, would have been impeached. The Debates in Parliament, and measures of Government, every day furnish new Proofs of the truths which I have been attempting to establish--of the utter want of general principles;--new and lamentable proofs! This moment (while I am drawing towards a conclusion) I learn, from the newspaper reports, that the House of Commons has refused to declare that the Convention of Centra _disappointed the hopes and expectations of the Nation_.