between the present moment and the year 1808.  In 1808 we had a large army prepared for foreign service a whole war establishment ready appointed:  and the simple question was, in what quarter we could best apply its force against the common enemy of England, of Spain, of Portugal,—­of Europe.  This country had no hopes of peace:  our abstinence from the Spanish war could in no way have accelerated the return of that blessing; and the Peninsula presented, plainly and obviously, the theatre of exertion in which we could contend with most advantage.  Compare, then, I say, that period with the present; in which, none of the inducements, or incitements, which I have described as belonging to the opportunity of 1808, can be found.

But is the absence of inducement and incitement all?  Is there no positive discouragement in the recollections of that time, to check too hasty a concurrence in the warlike views of the honourable member for Westminster?  When England, in 1808, under all the circumstances which I have enumerated, did not hesitate to throw upon the banks of the Tagus, and to plunge into all the difficulties of the Peninsular War, an army destined to emerge in triumph through the Pyrenees, was that course hailed with sympathy and exultation by all parties in the State?  Were there no warnings against danger? no chastisements for extravagance? no doubts—­no complaints—­no charges of rashness and impolicy?  I have heard of persons, Sir,—­persons of high authority too—­who, in the very midst of the general exaltation of spirit throughout this country, declared that, ’in order to warrant England in embarking in a military co-operation with Spain, something more was necessary than to show that the Spanish cause was just.’  ’It was not enough,’ said these enlightened monitors, ’it was not enough that the attack of France upon the Spanish nation was unprincipled, perfidious, and cruel—­that the resistance of Spain was dictated by every principle, and sanctioned by every motive, honourable to human nature—­that it made every English heart burn with a holy zeal to lend its assistance against the oppressor:  there were other considerations of a less brilliant and enthusiastic, but not less necessary and commanding nature, which should have preceded the determination of putting to hazard the most valuable interests of the country.  It is not with nations as with individuals.  Those heroic virtues which shed a lustre upon individual man must, in their application to the conduct of nations, be chastened by reflections of a more cautious and calculating cast.  That generous magnanimity and high-minded disinterestedness, proud distinctions of national virtue (and happy were the people whom they characterize), which, when exercised at the risk of every personal interest, in the prospect of every danger, and at the sacrifice even of life itself, justly immortalize the hero, cannot and ought not to be considered justifiable motives of political action, because nations cannot afford to be chivalrous