Secondly.  Let him look to that part of Spain which yet remains unsubdued.—­It was thought no slight proof of heroism in the people of Madrid, that they prepared for their defence—­not as the foremost champions of Spain (in which character they might have gained an adventitious support from the splendour of their post; and, at any rate, would have been free from the depression of preceding disasters)—­but under a full knowledge of recent and successive overthrows; their advanced armies had been defeated; and their last stay, at Somosierra, had been driven in upon them.  But the Provinces in the South have many more causes for dejection:  they have heard, since these disasters, that this heroic city of Madrid has fallen; that their forts in Catalonia have been wrested from them; that an English army just moved upon the horizon of Spain—­to draw upon itself the gaze and expectations of the people, and then to vanish like an apparition; and, finally, they have heard of the desolation of Saragossa.  Under all this accumulation of calamity, what has been their conduct?  In Valencia redoubled preparations of defence; in Seville a decree for such energetic retaliation on the enemy,—­as places its authors, in the event of his success, beyond the hopes of mercy; in Cadiz—­on a suspicion that a compromise was concerted with their enemy—­tumults and clamours of the people for instant vengeance; every where, in their uttermost distress, the same stern and unfaultering attitude of defiance as at the glorious birth of their resistance.

In this statement, then, of the past efforts of Spain—­and of her present preparations for further efforts—­will be found a full answer to all the charges alleged, by Sir John Moore in his letters, against the people of Spain, even if we did not find sufficient ground for rejecting them in an examination of these letters themselves.

* * * * *

The Author of the above note—­having, in justice to the Spaniards, spoken with great plainness and freedom—­feels it necessary to add a few words, that it may not thence be concluded that he is insensible to Sir J. Moore’s claims upon his respect.  Perhaps—­if Sir J.M. could himself have given us his commentary upon these letters, and have restricted the extension of such passages as (from want of vigilance in making distinctions or laxity of language) are at variance with concessions made elsewhere—­they would have been found not more to differ from the reports of other intelligent and less prejudiced observers, than we might have expected from the circumstances under which they were written.  Sir J.M. has himself told us (in a letter published since the above note was written) that he thinks the Spaniards ‘a fine people;’ and that acknowledgement, from a soldier, cannot be supposed to exclude courage; nor, from a Briton, some zeal for national independence.  We are therefore to conclude that, when Sir J.M. pronounces opinions