The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1853-12-20 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

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 justifiable 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 imminent 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 overgovernment 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 hemispheres. 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 intervention had been limited to this, the most scrupulous public morality could not have objected to the course pursued. 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 Caragained 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 insurwas 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 provinces 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