I believe if there be any country in the world in which it is both the duty and interest of England to prevent the existence of hostilities, that country is Portugal.  We are bound by treaties to defend her, as she is, in case of need, to defend England.  It is affirmed that we are under engagements to preserve a strict neutrality towards the two Princes now opposed to each other in Portugal; but we are bound in honour and good policy to protect that country, in which his Majesty’s subjects have such interests invested, and with which they carry on such extensive commerce:  yet the present government have hazarded all these interests by permitting this war to be carried on there by a foreign power.  The king, in his speech, calls it, indeed, a “civil war.”  My Lords, it is a revolutionary war—­a war carried on by means furnished in this town, and for the advance of which the inducement is the hope of plunder.  It is carried on by persons who have no interest in the war excepting plunder.  Yet this is the war which his Majesty has been advised by his servants to call, upon the assembling of his parliament, “a civil war between the two branches of the house of Braganza in Portugal.”  The king is made, by his Ministers, to declare that he is anxiously desirous to put an end to this war.  “I shall not fail to avail myself of any opportunity that may be afforded me to assist in restoring peace to a country with which the interests of my dominions are so intimately connected.”  Now, I know something of war, and I know something of war in that country; and I will tell noble Lords how they can put an end to it at once.  Let them put forth a proclamation recalling his Majesty’s subjects from the service of both parties engaged in the contest,—­let them, at the same time, carry into execution the law of the country; let them, when the commissioners of the customs, in the execution of their exclusive duty, seize vessels carrying out troops, ammunition and officers, who, I am able to prove, are at this moment serving in those armies, leave the adjudication of such seizures to the proper tribunals; and let not the King’s ministers interfere, and let them employ the British fleet in the Levant, and other places, to which the attention of his Majesty’s government ought to be directed, instead of being employed in watching the shores of the Douro and the Tagus—­let them do all this, and they will soon find that peace will be restored to Portugal without any further sacrifice.  But I am sorry to say these are not the measures adopted by his Majesty’s government, nor is the law carried into execution by that government.  My Lords, I engage to prove, that though the commissioners of the customs did, in the autumn of 1831, detain certain vessels in the Thames, having on board the very troops, ammunition, and arms which have been since employed in this war; and although these commissioners are, by the act of parliament, the persons appointed to carry it into execution,—­they were ordered, by a superior power, not to interfere.