75 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809. 



should have been placed in Spain 

 in a situation, the only one which 

 the country afforded, where it 

 would have been safe from the 

 risk of total loss or capture, and 

 would not have been kept down 

 by the idea that the deposit was 

 too great for the country to hazard. 

 This should have been the great 

 foundation, the base-line of the 

 campaign. On this the country 

 might have given a loose to all 

 its exertions, with the consolatory 

 reflection that the greater its ex- 

 ertions, the greater its security ; 

 that the more it made its prepa- 

 rations effectual for their purpose, 

 the less was the risk at which it 

 acted. From this, other opera- 

 tions might have branched in 

 <lifferent directions, as circum- 

 stances pointed out. It was scan- 

 dalous that nothing had been ever 

 done to assist our friends or annoy 

 our enemies on the east side of 

 Spain, where to a power having 

 the complete command of the sea, 

 the finest opportunities were pre- 

 sented, and had been most unac- 

 countably neglected. Ministers 

 had forgotten that there was 

 such a coast as the eastern coast 

 of Spain ; that it was accessible 

 every where to our ships ; placed 

 as the high road for the entry of 

 troops from France ; inhabited by 

 the race of men who fought at 

 Saragossa and Gerona : and on 

 the other hand, that we had a 

 large army doing nothing in Sicily, 

 or who, if we were to attempt to 

 employ them in the quarter where 

 they were, must be employed in 

 worse than doing nothing. For 

 all operations in this quarter of 

 Spain, Gibraltar afforded the most 

 marked facilities. 



With a large army stationed in 



the south, the enemy could never 

 know what detachments were 

 slipping out behind us, nor with 

 what descents they might be 

 threatened in their rear or their 

 flanks: the army needed never to 

 have been idle : or, what was 

 hardly less advantageous, to have 

 been supposed to be idle. A great 

 army assembled at such a nation 

 would have had the farther ad- 

 vantage, that it would have given 

 us an ascendancy in the Spanish 

 councils, highly advantageous to 

 them, and such as with tolerable 

 good conduct, might have been 

 made not less popular. 



Mr. W. observed that the great 

 and pregnant source of error in 

 the conduct of the present ad- 

 ministration, next to their mis- 

 information and general ignorance, 

 was, what they had in common 

 with many other ministers, and 

 what he had signally witnessed in 

 some of his own time, their mis- 

 taking bustling for activity ; and 

 supposing that they were doing a 

 great deal, when thej' were only 

 making a great noise and spending 

 a great deal of money. While 

 they were writing long dispatches, 

 issuing orders in all directions, 

 keeping up clerks to unusual hours, 

 covering the roads with messen- 

 gers, and putting the whole coun- 

 try into a ferment, they were very 

 apt to fancy that the public ser- 

 vice must be making prodigious 

 advances. It was thus too, they 

 supposed, that an administration 

 was to acquire the character of 

 vigour ! They looked at every 

 measure, not with a view to the 

 effect it was to produce abroad, 

 but to the appearance which it was 

 to make at home : and the public, 

 it appeared, joined them heartily 



m 



