Our mediation then, as I have said, was refused by Spain as well as by France; but before it was offered to France, our good offices had been asked by Spain.  They were asked in the dispatch of M. San Miguel, which has been quoted with so much praise, a praise in which I have no indisposition to concur.  I agree in admiring that paper for its candour, manliness, and simplicity.  But the honourable member for Westminster has misunderstood the early part of it.  He has quoted it, as if it complained of some want of kindness on the part of the British Government towards Spain.  The complaint was quite of another sort.  It complained of want of communication from this Government, of what was passing at Verona.  The substance of this complaint was true; but in that want of communication there was no want of kindness.  The date of M. San Miguel’s dispatch is the 15th of November; the Congress did not close till the 29th.  It is true that I declined making any communication to Spain, of the transactions which were passing at Verona, whilst the Congress was still sitting.  I appeal to any man of honour, whether it would not have been ungenerous to our allies to make such a communication, so long as we entertained the smallest hope that the result of the Congress might not be hostile to Spain; and whether, considering the peculiar situation in which we were placed at that time, by the negotiation which we were carrying on at Madrid for the adjustment of our claims upon the Spanish Government, such a communication would not have been liable to the suspicion that we were courting favour with Spain, at the expense of our allies, for our own separate objects?  We might, to be sure, have said to her, ’You complain of our reserve, but you don’t know how stoutly we are righting your battles at Verona.’  But, Sir, I did hope that she never would have occasion to know that such battles had been fought for her.  She never should have known it, if the negotiations had turned out favourably.  When the result proved unfavourable, I immediately made a full disclosure of what had passed; and with that disclosure, it is unnecessary to say, the Spanish Government were, so far as Great Britain was concerned, entirely satisfied.  The expressions of that satisfaction are scattered through Sir W. A’Court’s reports of M. San Miguel’s subsequent conversations; and are to be found particularly in M. San Miguel’s note to Sir William A’Court of the 12th of January.

In the subsequent part of the dispatch of M. San Miguel, of the 15th of November (which we are now considering), that Minister defines the course which he wishes Great Britain to pursue; and I desire to be judged and justified in the eyes of the warmest advocate for Spain, by no other rules than those laid down in that dispatch.