44 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809. 



had to meet 30 sail of the lino 

 instead of 12 or 13? In such a 

 case, would the naval officers of 

 Great Britain have stood as they 

 do now in the Baltic, or in any 

 part of the world i 



With regard to the grand and 

 overwhelming consideration which 

 raust at present press upon the 

 mind of every man, he was pre- 

 pared to prove, whenever the sub- 

 ject should be brought in a tangi- 

 ble shape before the House, that 

 his Majesty's government had 

 acted on the fullest conviction 

 that the course pursued would be 

 the most conducive to the success 

 of the cause of Spain ; and if that 

 cause should not prevail, the 

 failure would result, not from any 

 neglect on their part, but from 

 greater engines of destruction 

 having been brought forward 

 against that country, than it was 

 in the power of Great Britain 

 to afford means of defence.— 

 Mr. Ponsonby had described two 

 modes in which our military 

 assistance might have been afford- 

 ed, the one merely by furnishing 

 the Spaniards with arms and am- 

 munition ; the other, that of send- 

 ing to their aid a regular military 

 force. The right hon. gentleman 

 had expressed a partiality for that 

 species of warfare recommended 

 in a List of Precautions, by what 

 he called, the Supreme Central 

 Junta. He certainly did recollect 

 the paper alluded to, but it was 

 circulated long before the Supreme 

 Central Junta had an existence. 

 The writer was unknown. It had 

 no kind of authority.* And it 

 was impossible to ascertain whe- 

 ther 



• Mr. Ponsonby was not quite correct in attributing this celebrated paper to the 

 Supreme Central Junta. Cut Lord Castlereagh deviated still farther from the 



truth 



last spring to co-operate with our 

 ally the King of Sweden, as far 

 as naval interference went, it 

 turned out to be most critically 

 opportune; for the Marquis of 

 Romana, who was at that time at 

 the Isle of Funen, had distinctly 

 stated, when subsequently in this 

 country, that if the British had 

 not entered the Belt on the very 

 da)' on which it had, his army must 

 have passed over to Zealand, fol- 

 lowed by that of Bernadotte. As 

 to what related to the military 

 force, that was not left to the 

 judgment of the British govern- 

 ment alone : the force sent to 

 Sweden was sent on the requisi- 

 tion, nay at the entreaty of the 

 Swedish minister resident in this 

 country, who said that that force 

 might make the whole difference 

 between the loss or the salvation 

 of Sweden. What had been the 

 circumstances which led to the 

 return of the troops the house was 

 not at that time investigating. He 

 had no hesitation in declaring that 

 the gallant commander of that 

 force, stood entirely exculpated. 

 As to the great naval exertions 

 stated to have been made by Den- 

 mark, notwithstanding the seizure 

 of her navy, did the right hon. 

 gentleman mean to say that in 

 the course of the last naval cam- 

 paign in the Baltic, it would have 

 made no difference, if, when the 

 Russian fleet came out of Cron- 

 stadt, they had been joined by 18 

 Danish ships of the line ? Would 

 not this country have been obliged 

 to provide an equivalent fleet for 

 the purpose of counteracting the 

 naval force of the enemy, if we 



