12 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1810. 



plan was radically erroneous. Ant- 

 werp, he told them, instead of be- 

 ing a weak defenceless town, was 

 absolutely impregnable ; that the 

 ships had been moved out of the 

 reach of attack, and that our force, 

 great as it was, was insufficient for 

 the attempt, and daily diminishing 

 from the diseases of a pestilential 

 climate. When the objects of the 

 expedition were at last discovered 

 to be clearly unattainable, and all 

 farther operations prudently aban- 

 doned, it was supposed by minis- 

 ters, that the immediate return of 

 the expedition would mark too 

 strongly the complete failure of 

 their plans, and therefore they de- 

 termined that our troops should 

 remain under a climate notoriously 

 pestilential, and proverbially fatal. 

 That it really was so, appeared in- 

 disputably from two facts on re- 

 cord. The late sir John Pringle, 

 a man remarkably eminent in the 

 medical profession, had long ago 

 published an Dccount of the ende- 

 mic diseases of Walcheren, which 

 were most destructive to our ar- 

 miesinl777, at which time the pro- 

 portion of the sick to the healthy, 

 was as four to one. The Swiss 

 troops, formerly in the pay of the 

 United Slates, always made it a 

 stipulation, that they should not 

 be obliged to serve in Walcheren. 

 His majesty's ministers, if they did 

 not know the extreme insalubrity 

 of that island, should have sought, 

 or opened their eyes to, the easiest 

 means of information on that sub- 

 ject. The motion for the amend- 

 ment was seconded, in a long and 

 elaborate, yet eloquent and ani- 

 mated speed), by 



The Honourable Mr. J. W. 

 Ward, who rose to support the 

 amendment. From a great variety 



of observations by Mr. Ward, we 

 select thefollowing. — It appeared, 

 that during the last seven or eight 

 months,hismajesty's ministers had 

 failed in three great and deliberate 

 designs: and that, ifweeixtended 

 our view a little farther, we should 

 include the campaign which ter- 

 minated in the death of sir John 

 Moore ; which, again, was pre- 

 ceded, at no long interval, by the 

 convention of Cintra ; so that, on 

 the whole, the result was this, 

 that during the time that his ma- 

 jesty's ministers had conducted his 

 government, they had attempted 

 every thing every where, on the 

 largest scale, and that in every 

 thing they had failed; except in- 

 deed in thatinstance, in which they 

 directed his arms, not against his 

 enemies, but his allies. Their en- 

 terprises had all of them either a 

 ludicrous or a disastrous termina- 

 tion. Now, to maintain that acci- 

 dent had been every thing, and 

 misconduct nothing, in those trans- 

 actions, was to maintain that a 

 species of miracle was worked 

 against us. Accidents might ac- 

 count for some detached failures 

 in the course of a long administra- 

 tion ; but a man must have a high 

 opinion of the king's servants in- 

 deed, and must moreover have an 

 understanding most si ngularlycon- 

 stituted, who could persuade him- 

 self that the convention of Cintra, 

 the miserable expulsion of our 

 army under sir John Moore, the 

 ludicrous capture of Ischia and 

 Procidia, the second useless, ex- 

 pensive, and destructive campaign 

 in Spain, and, to crown all, the ex- 

 pedition to Walcheren ; — that all 

 these things following each other 

 with the utmost rapidity, not a 

 single success intervening to break 



