The corrections, &c., will be in Longman’s hands before this reaches you. I have incorporated part of the preface to the third volume, added the rest of it after the “Life,” and inserted in the “Life” some things noted from the letters which were last in my possession.

The proofs are to be sent me, that I may carefully revise the whole. One gap is left for you to fill up with the name of the college at which Almond was entered.

I am heartily glad that the supplementary volume has done its work so well. The “Remains” have yet one stage to reach; they must one day be printed in a smaller form for the pocket, and for popular sale.

You ask me concerning the affairs of Spain. Three years ago, I dined at Mr. Butler’s (the Catholic),

when his son–in–law, Colonel Stonor,

who is a Spaniard, has just received the first packet of pamphlets, proclamations, and newspapers, after the Revolution had been effected by the army.

They called upon me to rejoice with them, but I could not join in their exultation; – a bad government, indeed, had been overthrown, but a better had not been substituted for it. The Constitution which the Cortes had formed,

tended decidedly (and designedly, also, no doubt) to bring about a democracy. I had always seen this tendency, and my disapprobation was by no means diminished when I saw it restored through the instrumentality of soldiers who thought it better to stay at home and subvert the Government, than obey its order by embarking for America.

The Spanish Revolution has been occasioned not by any desire of change on the part of the people, but by the inability of the Government to pay its civil and military establishments. Ferdinand

returned to a ruined kingdom, that is, ruined as to its finances: the colonies from whence the main revenues had formerly been derived were lost, and the mother–country in no condition to support taxes, everything having been subverted. The same cause would have overthrown the present Government two years ago, if it had not been supported by the loans which it raised in England,

and which, in all likelihood, will ruin all who have engaged in them. Meantime, the manner in which they have robbed the nobility and the Church of their property has offended both these bodies:

the kingdom is overrun with banditti; the rabble in the large towns are become radicals, made so by the Government itself; the great majority of the nation detest the new order of things, but would be passive under any order if they could; and the braver spirits have taken arms against it.

The course which the Revolutionists have taken resembles that of their French exemplars so closely that no doubt can be entertained of their going through the same stages of regicide and massacre if left to themselves, unless the Royalists were strong enough to recover the ascendency. And here a difficult question arises. Is it expedient for France to interfere?

To question the right of interference is absurd. If my next–door neighbours were fighting, endeavouring to kill one another, and likely, moreover, in their quarrel, to set fire to the house, it would be madness in me not to interfere, if I could do it to any good purpose.

Therefore, if France were a power which could be trusted, and would interfere as honourably as we did when we rescued Spain from Buonaparte,

I should approve its interference, and heartily wish it success. But the French are a faithless nation: they have ever been so, and, upon the first favourable opportunity, they would gladly revive the wildest schemes of Louis XIV.

or Buonaparte. Even could we trust them, and their conduct were to be as unexceptionable as I verily think the grounds of their interference are, the question of expediency is a very difficult one. When they get to Madrid (which may be done without difficulty), the work is far from being over. They may make a new government, or restore the old despotism, but how is it to be supported? The old difficulty of the finances recurs; and thus government will require, not our auxiliary troops to keep the country quiet, but loans to maintain it, till credit and prosperity are restored. France may have some reason to apprehend discontent at home, and the explosion of her own combustibles, if the struggle be prolonged; or, to prevent this, it is not improbable that she may be willing to provoke a war with England, for which the Portuguese seem disposed to give her a pretext.

If they assist the Spaniards, and the French, in consequence, invade Portugal, we can no longer remain neutral.