taken part in the cause of Spain, by various overt acts, which happily cannot be retracted. After recognizing, in the most so lemn manner, the revolutionary government, by concluding a treaty of peace with the Juntas, to terminate a war waged against the Catholic King, and cheerfully assisting the Spaniards in their military operations against the common enemy, although that enemy was seconded by the hereditary monarch of Spain; our most gracious Sovereign has been recently advised to send a minister, with full powers, as the representative of his august person, to his brother Ferdinand VII., the heir-apparent of the crown, who owes his title solely to the misgovernment of his father, and the choice of his people. This is indeed a proof of the force of those sound constitutional principles, which we glory in thinking are once more prevalent amongst us. It is a signal triumph for those doctrines which are truly, and, till lately, have been exclusively English. Nor do those members of our own cabinet deserve little praise, who have made their courtly colleagues yield to the general impulse, and counselled their Sovereign once more to proclaim the principles which alone placed his Illustrious House upon the throne. If these happy effects have already flowed from the Spanish revolution, and are sure to spread far and wide over this great country the blessings of free discussion, watchful jealousy of the govern ment, and unsparing reform of existing abuses; it is equally manifest, that the force of the example of Spain will not be spent here, but must reach over the other states of the Continent. Admitting that no further successes should crown the Spanish arms, and that Bonaparte should, by overwhelming armies, beat down all opposition to his detestable projects,-he has lost much, and must lose more, before the struggle is at an end. He has learned, and France has been made to recollect, a lesson which she had of late years lost sight of, the powers of popular enthusiasm, when roused by injustice and oppression. It is now to be appre hended, that similar acts of usurpation will be met by somewhat of the same resistance wherever they are attempted. There may now be other enemies to beat besides drill sergeants and imperial guards, before armies can march over the countries of unoffending allies. The feeling of power has been communicated to the people in every part of Europe; and any such shameless aggressions as those which first roused up this feeling in Spain, will in all likelihood give rise to revolutionary movements elsewhere. It can scarcely be expected, that, while things remain quiet, the Germans will change their government; but it is no small improvement of their condition, that the enemy should have reason to dread an intestine revolution (the only formidable antagonist he has ever met with), as often as he attempts to shake, by any extraordinary efforts of usurpation, the existing order of things. Nor Nor will the Spaniards themselves fail to reap the fruits of their valour and patriotism, however sorely they may be discomfited in their present struggle. That Bonaparte will ultimately succeed, we apprehend is highly probable; that he will succeed without great efforts and losses, is absolutely impossible; and no man, beyond the precincts of a court, is frantic enough to suppose, that the utmost success of his arms can subdue the people of Spain into a nation of willing and peaceful slaves. This he knows as well as we do; and we may be assured that he will not only offer them good terms, after the tide of fortune has begun to turn in his favour, but will finally grant them such a capitulation as their gallant resistance at once deserves, and renders it absolutely necessary for the conqueror to allow. He will rule Spain with a very light rod, if he ever rules her at all; because he knows, that there is no other chance of ruling her long. We ascribe here nothing to his virtue; we only give him credit for some of that prudence which never forsook him before the march into Spain, and of which, there is too much reason to dread, he has long ere now regained possession. Having sketched out, hastily and imperfectly, some of the consequences which we deem most likely to flow from the present state of affairs in Spain, whatever may be its ultimate issue, we shall now bring these remarks to a close, by turning our attention towards the policy which this country should adopt with respect to its new allies. And here it unhappily is, as upon every former occasion, our lot to complain against all that has been already done for Spain, and to confine our commendations to the generosity of the intentions manifested by the British government. We shall state our objections plainly, at the risk of repeating the doctrines we formerly advanced (Review of Gentz's last work *), because their application to the present question is extremely obvious, and because it is now more important than ever to inculcate them. When any operation of war is to be performed by our allies, whether they have to attack the common enemy, or to defend themselves against his invasion, we hold it to be self-evident, that England can assist the common cause only in one of three ways, by subsidy, by direct cooperation, or by diversion. We might almost lay it down broadly, that, having chosen one of these ways, none of the other two should be combined with it; and for this simple reason, that it is much better to exert our whole power in one way, first choosing, of course, the one most beneficial to the cause, than to fritter away and distract our force by attempting all at once. It is scarcely possible, in the present * No. XVIII. Art. I. state state of our finances, that we should safely afford large sums to an ally, and pay the expense also of large expeditions to assist him. Better employ the whole money either in helping him to draw forth his own resources as he best thinks he can (for without implicit confidence all confederacies are worse than nugatory), or wholly direct the same sums to fit out such expeditions as may really influence the fate of the general operations. In like manner, if it is deemed most advisable to aid the cause with troops of your own, choose well between the only two ways in which those forces can act. You have no chance of raising such armies as may suffice at once to influence the fate of the campaign, in the quarter where the great effort is making, and assist the operations of the allied arms by diversions in other quarters. Attempting both plans is sure to frustrate both, and spoil the whole effect. You will send the show of an army to be beaten with that of your allies, should it reach the field in time to partake of the common disaster; and your diversions will be, on the mass of the enemy's force, only so many feeble punctures,-infinitely costly to you,altogether harmless to him,-hurtful only to your allies, by depriving them of more effectual support. Having laid down these plain and incontestible principles, so obvious, indeed, that only the utter neglect of them which prevails in our councils could have justified us for stating them at any length, we need not examine which of the three modes of assisting our ally is the best adapted to the circumstances of this country. This is a question which can only be resolved by weighing the peculiarities of each case. And, although some general positions might be laid down applicable to every state of our foreign affairs ;-as, for example, that the subsidy system is liable to the greatest risk of abuse, and, in general, gives the worst return in proportion to the expense ;-that it is scarcely. possible to apply it so exactly, as to escape at once the danger of bribing an ally to premature operations of hostility, and to avoid, on the other hand, the risk of delay;-that it requires, perhaps, too great a degree of submission to the plans and views of our ally-that, of the other two modes of cooperating, the direct one is generally the most effectual;-that it gives our voice a greater weight in the common councils of the confederacy ;that it produces, in this way, the inestimable advantage of making that party, in some sort, an umpire among the allies whose views are necessarily the most free from all suspicion of sinister and selfish policy;-that it moreover tends, more than any other plan, to the radical improvement of our own military system, whilst it, above all modes of acting, raises our name, and increases our real influence in the affairs of Europe;-although these, and other maxims equally general, might be illustrated at P 2 length, length, in such a manner as to bear upon almost every case that could be supposed; yet we shall forbear pushing the statement further, and hasten to offer a few observations on the branch of the subject most immediately connected with the present crisis of affairs. If, then, at any time it is deemed most expedient (as it must almost always be) to aid the allied cause with troops, what would any man of plain common sense conceive to be the most effectual way of doing it? He would ask himself, Where are our allies in the greatest straits? Where does the pressure of the war fall heaviest?-because it is morally certain that in that quarter, whereever it be, the enemy is most anxious to succeed, and will be most injured by failure. It may indeed so happen, that he shall carry on a general system of attack, and make a great variety of smaller efforts in different places. In that case, however, the allies will naturally chuse one of these points, and endeavour to overpower him, until in a short time the contest comes as it were nearly to an issue, to a struggle at one important point, subordinate to, and dependent upon which main struggle, every other movement of the war must prove. The next question will be, Are our allies in this grand point quite secure? If they are not, it is there that we can best help them; and, that they never can be sufficiently strengthened there, without our assistance, is manifest from this consideration, that were it so, the enemy would not there have made his push; and if our allies are equally strong in other points, then we have only got an extreme case, in which no assistance of ours is of any use. But, in truth, no war was ever waged on the Continent in which the fate of the whole did not turn upon some grand operation in one quarter, carried on by the bulk of the contending forces. Upon the fate of the cause in that quarter, every thing else hinges in the most distant scenes; and if we attend to the constant, steady, masterly, resistless policy of our enemy, from the attack of a post, * up to the combination of entire campaigns, we shall find it built upon this single view of the subject. He means to gain several objects, we shall say, in different parts of his extensive dominions,-to drive the English out of Portugal, for example,-to reduce the King of Sweden to an amicable acknowledgement of his title,-to expel the Neapolitan family from the Continent, or to defend his new kingdoms * Examine the battles of Bonaparte, and indeed of all the great commanders of France, and you will find that the plan of each engagement is similar to the general system of their military policy. They direct a vast column to one well chosen point; break through the line in that quarter (as we do at sea); defeat the neighbouring parts of it; and then the rest falls before them. doms in Italy, to take a province or two from the German princes, and to punish, perhaps destroy Prussia. Now, if Bcnaparte's counsellors were taken from the English political caste, it is very plain what method he would adopt to gain all those points. He would, in the first place, take care to make war without the shadow of a pretence, and put himself clearly in the wrong before all Europe; he would next delay doing any thing until the season for operations was nearly gone by ;--he would then probably treat a little, and be duped by his allies, and cavil and wrangle a good deal, and quarrel with some of them, and excite a hatred of all of them, and of himself, and a contempt of his plans, among his own subjects. But, all these preliminaries of failure being settled, he would at last come to his operations; and his policy would be, to get up a number of neat little expeditions, equal in number to the things he wants to take, just one for each thing. He would send an expedition towards Sweden; and the sea not being his element, it would probably fail of itself. He would then send a tolerably large, and intolerably expensive expedition to some part of Germany,--another towards Italy, a smaller expedition to Portugal,-a nice little one to take a slice off Bavaria, besides a sort of by-expedition to plunder Hamburgh; and burn, for stage effect, some other capital in alliance with him, merely to astonish people and look vigorous. Instead of inquiring, what would be the probable result of all this drivelling, which is indeed too plain to require any statement, let us remark rather, how Bonaparte does act, not having English politicians to advise him. He leaves Naples alone: if Joseph can support himself, well; if not, he will restore him after the campaign is won. He leaves Sicily alone, filled with English troops, who are just as usefully employed for him as if he had them in his depot of prisoners,-filled too with the squabbles and intrigues of his faithful allies, the old royal sovereigns and courtiers of Europe. Portugal he leaves to the English army, there assembled for the precise purpose of doing all sorts of nothings against him. He cares not if the English are mad enough to make a descent upon Calabria in his absence, or childish enough, because it may have a partial success, to reward those who ventured on so uscless an enterprize, instead of calling them to an instantaneous and sewere account. All other objects of subordinate importance he leaves in like manner to themselves. The Swede is allowed to strut his little hour of squibs, manifestoes, and bulletins. The Turk is unmolested,-except by his allies. Egypt is occupied by none but English forces. Eager for ships, colonies and commerce, he defers all trading speculations till the season of victory and peace; nor envies us all the plunder and the rajahs of the east; or once throws away a thought on all the sugars of the west. But P 3 |