The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-12-20 00:00:00

eration but its nicely-adjusted proportion to the

offence, and the unerring certainty of aim. Evi-
dences of this impartiality are numerous through-
out his history, but we shall content ourselves with

quoting the remarks by which he concludes the
present volume ; they have immediate reference to

THE FRENCH INVASION OP SPAIN IN 1823.
No doubt can now remain that the French invasion of
Spain, against which public feeling in this country was so
strongly excited at the time, was not only a wise measure
on the part of the Bourbon government, but fully justifia-
ble on the best principles of international law. The
strength of this case is to be found, not in the absurdity
and peril of the Spanish constitution, or even the immi-
nent hazard to w

it exposed the royal family in that
try, and the entire liberties and property of the
; —it is to be found in the violent inroads which
fish revolutionists and their allies to the north of
enees were making on France itself, and the
extreme hazard to which its institutions were exposed in
consequence of their machinations. Ever since the Spanish
revolution broke out, France had been kept in a continual
ferment : the second in succession to the throne had been
murdered, and his consort, when enceinte of an heir to the
monarchy, attempted to be murdered, by political fanatics :
military conspiracies in great numbers had been got up to

country
the Spa
the PY

example of the soldiers in the Isle of Leon,
'Tied the government ; Paris had been convulsed

by an attempted revolution; France was covered with
secret societies, having Lafayette, Benjamin Constant,
'mud, and all the Liberal leaders in the Chamber of
4ies. at their head, the object of which was to over-
government by means of murder, treason, and
volt ; and a band of desperadoes had been collected on
Pyrenees, under the tricolour flag, who openly invited
French soldiers to fraternise with them, throw off the
,f the Bourbons, and rally round the standard of

throw th

Napoleon IL When such measures were in progress, it
was evident that the safety of France, and the preservation
" its institutions, were seriously menaced, and that its
1 in taking steps to extinguish
a volcano in the neighbouring state, by the
ongest of all reasons—that of self-preservation.
It is more difficult to find grounds to vindicate the
intervention of England in favour of the insurgent
colonies in South America, which was done in so efficacious
a manner, and from the success of which consequences of
such incalculable importance have ensued to both hemi-
spheres. Nothing can be clearer, indeed, than that when
the colonies of Spain had become de facto independent,
Ind Spain was obviously unable to reassert her dominion
.ve were warranted in treating with them as
and sending consuls to their chief

.overnment was warrant(
0 peril

over then.
independ

towns to guard British mercantile interests. If our inter-
vention had been limited to this, the most scrupulous
public morality could not have objected to the course pur-
sued. But we not only did this—we did a great deal
more, and of a much more questionable character. We
repealed the laws against foreign enlistments ; permitted
expeditions of eight and ten thousand men, many of them
Wellington's veterans, to sail from the Thames under the
very eye of government ; and advanced immense sums by
loan, to enable the insurgent states to prolong the contest.
It was by these means, and these alone, that the conflict
was ultimately decided in favour of the colonies, and
to mother country. The decisive battle of Cara-
gained entirely by British battalions and a charge

of the Brit:
What svl

s the justification for this armed and powerful
Was the freedom of England menaced by
blishment of Spanish authority in South
Confessedly it was not : the hope of commer-
, the vision of a vast trade with the insur-
was the ruling motive. But commercial

.merica ?

cial advantages,

advantages will not constitute legal right, or vindicate
acts of injustice, any more than the acquisition of pro-
vinces will justify an unprovoked invasion. It sounds
well to say you will call a new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old ; but if that new world is to
be carved out of the dominions of an allied and friendly

power, it is better to leave it to itself. England saw very
clearly the iniquity of this insidious mode of proceeding
when it was applied to herself, when Louis XVI. allowed
covert succours to the American insurgents to sail from
the French harbours, and the Americans sent some thou-

Loudly denounced it when the Americans allowed an expe-
dition to sail from New Orleans, in 1852, to revolutionise
Cuba; and she exclaimed against the Irish democrats, who
petitioned the French revolutionary government, in 1848,
to recognise a Hibernian republic in the Emerald Isle.