it will be impossible for the guardians of the honour of the army to avoid an inquiry whether his name can remain on its honourable list. The conduct imputed to him is that which, of all others, is most unworthy of an officer and a gentleman; and though I trust he will prove his innocence, I am bound to say that the accusation rests on grounds which absolutely require such proof. When it is said that these gentlemen entered Gibraltar under fictitious names, the first question which naturally occurs is, why? Had they any reason to doubt that the British territory would continue as in all past times the sacred refuge of the oppressed? Did they not know that we had received the fugitives from Philip 2 and the duke of Alba? Had they not heard how, even under a superstitious tyrant like their own, this nation had welcomed and cherished those who fled from the persecutions of Louis 14, the confessors and martyrs of the Protestant faith; that admirable body of exiles who more than repaid every land which they visited, by the example of their piety and virtue, as well as by the subordinate advantages of art, and industry, and wealth? Had they observed in our recent history any mark of degeneracy from ancient virtue? Did we belie the character of our ancestors, in our reception of that other body of emigrants from France, who, flying before a bloody tyranny which profaned the venerable name of a Republic, found here security and friendship, and left behind them a spotless reputation? What calumniator of this nation could have infused into them a distrust of a British fortress? What could prompt them to insult our character, by the supposition that disguise was necessary to avoid our treachery? By what infatuation could they destroy the safety of the passports which they had carried with them? These passports were granted to them only the day before, under their real names. When they obtained them they must have intended to use them, and consequently to enter Gibraltar under the real names mentioned in the passports. What motive can be conceived for their desiring to reject the security afforded by the passports, and choosing to enter a foreign fortress, where military regulations are and must be rigidly enforced, without any official protection, and with the extremely dangerous circumstance of a fictitious name? And this, too, after they had proclaimed at Cadiz their names and destination for Gibraltar, and when, (according to their own statement, which, if it be false, may be very easily refuted,) they gave in their passport on their arrival, and thus supplied the means of detecting the fictitious names. If they thought a fictitious name a better protection than a British passport, why did they solicit the passport? why did they not destroy it? why did they put it into the hands of the public authorities at Gibraltar? I must own that I cannot explain any of these circumstances. But farther, it is extremely observable that in Mr. Stedman's letter to sir James Duff of May the 19th, this remarkable circumstance of fictitious names is totally passed over. Considering the tone of the letter, it would have been natural to have said, "Though the villains had your passports, yet they were afraid to trust to them, and came here under fictitious names.' No allusion to what is now said to be the very reason of the arrest. "I had the honour to receive yours of the 16th last night, and immediately laid it before the commander of the forces, who promptly issued orders for the apprehension of the persons named, and I am happy to inform you that in less than two hours Puigblanc and Correa were made prisoners." These are the words of Stedman; and I defy any man to say that in their natural significa tion they do not import that the letter from the consulate was not the true and the sole cause of the apprehension of these gentlemen. General Smith indeed in his letter to lord Bathurst of the 31st of August says, that "a short time after the receipt of sir James Duff's letter, a report was made to him that two persons answering the description, had, by fictitious names, made their way into the place." A most fortunate coincidence indeed between the report, and the letters, and the more wonderful because from Stedman's words we should have concluded that no time passed, and certainly that no event so remarkable as the discovery of the fictitious names had occurred between the arrival of the letters and the apprehension of the fugitives. But unfortunately it opens another difficulty. These persons had entered the fort on the morning of the 16th; they lived at a public inn; they frequented the common walks; they had been seen by the Spanish consul. How came the report of the entry of two strangers on the morning of the 16th, to be for the first time made us. to the governor on the evening of the 18th? Here indeed difficulties crowd upon Urrutia, the Spanish consul, on the 19th demands them by their true names, and appears never to have heard that they had assumed any other, till he is informed of it by Mr. Stedman's answer. How did he learn their real names if they had not appeared at Gibraltar under them? But why should I waste the time of the House? It is manifest that if the assumption of fictitious names were true in point of fact, it could not be the true cause of the detention; this we have on the confession of Stedman. He concludes thus the letter of the 19th already stated: "I have received some information relative to Lopez and Don Miguel Cabrera; and if they are here, I hope they will soon be discovered. I am to inform you that measures are taken to discover and apprehend any other persons of a similar description." Did Lopez and Cabrera enter under false names? It is not even pretended; yet they too were to be arrested: or if they had, was the same disguise assumed by the undefined multitude whom this restorer of general warrants describes persons of a similar description,' whom he had taken measures to discover and apprehend?' It is apparent that this plan was to convert Gibraltar into a vast Bow-street for Ferdinand 7, and that the consulate of Cadiz were by perfidious passports to betray fugitives into his toils again. If the fictitious names could justify the apprehension, what have they to do with the surrender? Indeed I should have thought this circumstance of false names not to be deserving a long discussion, if it had not given rise to a most grave charge of intentional falsehood against a general of ficer in the British army, and if I were not most conscientiously convinced that it is the duty of his Majesty's government to inquire judicially whether general Smith can retain his commission, and to ascertain whether Mr. Stedman can continue to fill any station in his Majesty's service. most important part of the melancholy and disgraceful transaction before us, and I must entreat the serious attention of the House to it. On the 6th of May 1813, instructions were transmitted from the office of the foreign secretary of state to all his Majesty's ministers, consuls, and vice-consuls, requiring that all persons proposing to embark for the British dominions should apply to them for passports, which whereever the character or object of the person seemed (to the minister, consul, or viceconsul,) to be objectionable, were to be refused. Authorized and stimulated by these instructions, it is but too certain that the consulate of Cadiz refused even treacherous passports to many who sought to fly from their tyrants, and who were not yet disabused with respect to their long confidence in the inviolability of British territory. How many gentlemen of liberal education and condition, how many of those who led the resistance which saved Spain may, from such refusals, be now galley slaves at Ceuta, or languishing through the short remainder of their lives in a pestilential dungeon in the Philippines, we shall perhaps never know. These foul deeds are now involved in the impenetrable darkness which shrouds the Spanish monarchy. But when we see that the friends of liberty are treated as the vilest criminals, we may be well assured that at Cadiz alone, the number would be sufficient, if we could contem plate their present sufferings, to silence the stoutest champion of the consul and the governor-perhaps to alarm the authors of the instructions themselves. Not content with those terrible powers, those powers unknown to our ancestors, unheard of in any other government calling itself free, vested by the Alien Act; they transfer their exercise by these instructions from the highest officers of the state, who execute them under the eye of the public, under the constant control of parliament, under every sort of legal and moral responsibility, to several hundreds of agents For part of the conduct of sir James abroad; many of them obscure, many Duff, the part of it which has probably of them foreigners; where the abuse of produced the most wide-spreading mis- their power can scarcely ever be known, chief, and for much of the spirit which where no public overlooks them, and no breathes through his words and actions, parliament has much chance of ever knowI am sorry to say that I think there is ing their offences. By a clandestine insome excuse, if not justification, in the instruction, which nothing but the accidental structions which he received from the go- course of this investigation would have vernment of his country. This is the brought before the House, they confer the this treachery of our governors and consuls, power of shutting the gates of national hospitality-of shutting the gates of mercy on mankind,"-upon every viceconsul from Archangel to the southern extremity of Morocco! It is scarcely possible to imagine a discretion more likely to be abused-I certainly mean no disrespect to those who are charged with the commercial interests of their country abroad; nor is it really disrespectful to any body of men, to describe the temptations to which they are peculiarly exposed. From peculiar temptations, no profession or condition of human life is exempt. The consul or vice-consul is most commonly a trader in the port where he is established. Will he be quite sure to estimate impartially, the claims to a passport of a rival speculator in commerce? Will he easily grant a passport to him who desires to go to England to carry on a law-suit against himself, perhaps to complain of his oppressions to government, or to the criminal courts? By these instructions he is armed with authority to defeat the commercial speculations of his rivals, to shut the King's court on suitors or men aggrieved, to control the course of public justice. He may adopt the prejudices of his neighbours against an unhappy individual-he may be deterred from protecting him, by the vulgar clamour which he secretly despises -he may pay his court to the government of the country where he resides-he may ensure favour or the means of wealth from them, by driving back into their dungeons the suppliant who had implored permission to enter England-he may pay his court to unworthy English ministers by secretly oppressing those whose principles are obnoxious to them, but whose character is too high to be safely oppressed in the face of England. If such instructions had Indeed, Sir, the question seems to me of existed in the age of Louis 14th, can we deep and unspeakable importance. We doubt that many of those who were after-shall be numbered among the accomplices wards a blessing and an ornament to this country would have perished obscurely and miserably in the gallies? With such a pretext, is it credible that no consul would have paid his court to his own and to the French government, by the refusal of passports to the obnoxious Protestants? If they had existed in 1792, who will venture to say, that they might not have furnished cowardice, or malignity, or corruption, with a pretext for sending one more blameless head to the scaffolds of Robespierre ? What a shocking contrast does a late act of the government of France afford to of these men, if we refuse to disavow their crimes. The refusal of the House to censure them, the anxiety of ministers to excuse them, will confirm a most disgraceful and injurious suspicion, which, true or false, is already but too prevalent, that the secret influence of Great Britain is not neutral in the struggle between despotism and liberty in Spain; or rather, in the cowardly persecution raging in that country against the defenceless friends of liberty, and carried on by a monarch who owes to them his throne. Men in office may speak of these events with official reserve. This may be fit for them. But no inde pendent Englishman conceals his indignation. All Europe regards the state of Spain with shame and abhorrence, and heartily prays for the downfall of its government. No suspicion more generally injurious to the British character could prevail, than that we secretly prompt or even connive at those acts which we dare not justify. The veneration and enthusiastic attachment felt towards this country by the lovers of liberty and of justice, in other countries has long formed a more considerable part of our moral force than vulgar politicians may perhaps believe. They are our disinterested unsubsidized allies. Their opinion has exercised a constant though often invisible influence on the measures of government. During the greatest part of the eighteenth century their reverence formed much of our importance and dignity; detached from us in the American war, overwhelmed in the convulsions of the revolutions, it revived with tenfold force under the pressure of military despotism, and had perhaps reached its zenith at the treaty of Paris. Mr. Wellesley Pole said, that notwithstanding the very elaborate speech of the hon. and learned gentleman who had just sat down, it appeared to him that the question before the House lay in a very narrow compass. The hon. gentleman, who had brought forward the motion, had with great candour and justice declared, that he was satisfied that the secretary of state had shewn every disposition to remedy the mischief, and to repair that breach of hos. pitality which the commanding officer at Gibraltar had, from an erroneous concep. tion of his duty, committed. He had declared that he should not have made this motion, conceiving that general Smith and sir James Duff had already been sufficiently punished, if something which had fallen from his right hon. friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had not made a further discussion necessary. He was ready to admit, that the conduct of general Smith could not be justified, and he asserted that his hon. friend (Mr. Goulburn) had not attempted to defend it; be had merely endeavoured to shew the misconception under which that officer acted, and to prove that for that misconception he had already been sufficiently punished. Indeed, he thought the subject had been so ably discussed and elucidated by his hon. friend, that he should not have thought it necessary for him to trouble the House, if it had not been for some extraneous matter which had been introduced by the hon. mover, and by the hon. and learned gentleman who had just sat down, and which he felt it impossible to suffer to pass without notice. God grant that the present and similar events may not since that time have robbed us of much of this honourable strength! It was founded on the spotless faith of this kingdom. It was founded on the inviolable asylum of her sacred territory. It was founded above all on that noble system of wisdom and justice the free constitution of England; which made us observant of faith and hospitable to the oppressed; the school of every virtue, the source of the inferior benefits of wealth and power; the model, the pride, the The hon. gentleman who brought forhope, the consolation of the human race. ward the question, had thought proper to When our national faith is now mentioned, enter into a discussion upon the present I must hang down my head with shame and state of Spain, and to animadvert in severe dejection; it is bartered for Alexandria'; and harsh terms upon the conduct of king it is bartered for Savoy; it is buried in the Ferdinand and upon his government. The same grave with the independence of hon. gentleman had also added that imGenoa. Our territory is no longer a city pressions had gone abroad that the governof refuge; our flag is no longer the ment of this country had assisted the king symbol of security and the badge of hope of Spain in the conduct which he had purto the eye of the oppressed exile. A sued since his return. He begged to British consul has become an alguazil of observe, that he was at a loss to conceive the Inquisition, and a British general has what good the hon. gentleman supposed become a gaoler for Ferdinand 7; while could arise from such animadversions, the desponding friends of freedom begin upon, and such language towards, an ally to apprehend, that whatever remains of of this country. Whatever the House or attachment to the laws of their forefathers the ministers might think of the conduct may still linger in the bosoms of the of the Spanish government, nothing that people of England, ber ministers have they could say or do, could prevent the learned from familiar acquaintance rather sovereign of an independent country from to fear than to love liberty. governing his own dominions as he pleased. No men could deplore the conduct of the | the cortes were put in prison. What folSpanish government more than his Ma- lowed? On the 13th, the king set out for jesty's ministers did; but when gentlemen Madrid. Upon that occasion, the whole asserted, that the king of Spain and his population of the country assembled; ministers stood alone in that country, that they took the mules from his carriage, the people were inimical to king Fer- and he was drawn from Aranjuez to his dinand, and disapproved of his conduct in capital, amidst the enthusiastic acclamaannulling the cortes, he assured them that tions of the largest assemblage of the they were entirely mistaken; and it was people that had ever been known in Spain. important that he should, by stating a few If, therefore, gentlemen thought that the historical facts, set them right upon that conduct of the king in removing the cortes subject: he begged, however, in so doing, was unpopular in Spain, they were comto guard himself from the supposition, pletely mistaken. He wished that the that he, or any of his Majesty's ministers, people of Spain felt as the people of Engapproved of the conduct which he was land did; but it should be recollected, about to describe; for he assured the that as the latter would not suffer any House, that if ever the time should come foreign nation to interfere with their interwhen the whole of the conduct of his Ma- nal government, so, on the other hand, jesty's ministers, of our ambassador in it was rather too much for them to say, Spain, and of the commander in chief in that they had a right to dictate to another that country, could be made public, it people what sort of government they would appear, that nothing had been left should have, and to revile them because undone that could be done by advice or they did not think and feel like Englishrepresentation to prevent those events men. He lamented therefore, he repeated, which every one must deplore. that gentlemen thought it right to animad vert in such strong terms upon the Spanish government; it could answer no good end, and might tend to shake our alliance with that government-[Hear, hear! on the Opposition side of the House]. He begged gentlemen to consider that it was no unimportant matter whether Spain was thrown into our scale or into any other. But the hon. gentleman should not run away with the opinion, that there was but one sentiment in Spain respecting the Spanish government. Upon the return of the king of Spain to his dominions, he went to Valencia, and the hon. mover had expressed his regret that the British ambassador, sir Henry Wellesley, had gone thither to meet the king. The hon. gentleman had not, indeed, blamed that conduct, but he had lamented it. The hon. gentleman, however, should recollect, that sir Henry Wellesley was sent as ambas sador to king Ferdinand, in whose name the cortes and the regency carried on the government, and that therefore, when the king returned to his dominions, it was the duty of the British ambassador to pay his respects to the sovereign to whom he was accredited. But, when the king arrived at Valencia, he was met by the general officers of his army, and by a great variety of other persons, who all implored him to put an end to the then existing government, and to remove the cortes. Throughout the whole of his journey he heard nothing but the same language of detestation at the government of the regency and the cortes. He regretted very much that such should be the case, but the fact was so. The king arrived at Aranjuez on the 11th May; his proclamation annulling the old government was dated the 4th of May, and issued at Madrid on the 11th; and on that day a part of the members of (VOL. XXIX.) The hon. gentleman had also said, that there were imputations against us for our conduct to New as well as to Old Spain; but surely nothing could justify Great Britain, being in alliance with Spain, to interfere between the mother country and her colonies, more than we had done in the time of the cortes, when we offeredour mediation, which was unfortunately not accepted. The hon. gentleman had also mentioned the duke of Wellington; he had, indeed, mentioned him as he always did, in a manner that must be gratifying to every one who felt an affection for that noble person; but the hon. gentleman seemed surprised that the noble duke, who had received his honours and favours from the cortes, should have again received them from the king: but the hon. gentleman should recollect, that these honours were conferred in the name of the king, and therefore it was natural that the king should confirm the honours which had been granted in his name. ashamed to have taken up so much of the time of the House upon this part of the subject. (4E) He was |