‘The acts to winch I allude’, says M. San Miguel, ’would in no wise compromise the most strictly conceived system of neutrality. Good offices, counsels, the reflections of one friend in favour of another, do not place a nation in concert of attack or defence with another, do not expose it to the enmity of the opposite party, even if they do not deserve its gratitude; they are not (in a word) effective aid, troops, arms, subsidies, which augment the force of one of the contending parties.  It is of reason only that we are speaking; and it is with the pen of conciliation that a Power, situated like Great Britain, might support Spain, without exposing herself to take part in a war, which she may perhaps prevent, with general utility.’  Again:  ’England might act in this manner:  being able, ought she so to act? and if she ought, has she acted so?  In the wise, just, and generous views of the Government of St. James’s, no other answer can exist than the affirmative.  Why then does she not notify to Spain what has been done, and what it is proposed to do in that mediatory sense (en aquel sentido mediador)?  Are there weighty inconveniences which enjoin discretion, which show the necessity of secrecy?  They do not appear to an ordinary penetration.’

I have already told the House why I had not made such a notification; I have told them also that as soon as the restraint of honour was removed, I did make it; and that the Spanish Government was perfectly satisfied with it.  And with respect to the part which I have just quoted of the dispatch of M. San Miguel, that in which he solicits our good offices, and points out the mode in which they are to be applied, I am sure the House will see that we scrupulously followed his suggestions.

Most true it is, and lamentable as true, that our representations to France were not successful.  The honourable member for Westminster attributes our failure to the intrigues of Russia; and has told us of a bet made by the Russian Ambassador in a coffee-house at Paris, that he would force France into a war with Spain.

[Mr. Hobhouse disclaimed this version of his words.  He had put it as a conjecture.]

I assure the honourable gentleman that I understood him to state it as a fact:  but if it was only conjecture, it is of a piece with, the whole of the Address which he supports; every paragraph of which teems with guesses and suppositions, equally groundless.

The honourable member for Bridgenorth (Mr. Whitmore) has given a more correct opinion of the cause of the war.  I believe, with him, that the war was forced on the French Government by the violence of a political party in France.