Was it lawful for the English army, in the case of its being reduced to the supposed dilemma of either re-embarking or making _some_ convention, to make _that specifical_ convention which it did make at Cintra?
This is of necessity and _a fortiori_ denied; and it has been proved that neither to this, nor any other army, could it be lawful to make such a convention--not merely under the actual but under any conceivable circumstances; let however this too, on behalf of the parties accused, be granted; and then the third question will be 3.

Was the English Army reduced to that dilemma?
4.

Finally, this also being conceded (which not even the Generals have dared to say), it remains to ask by whose and by what misconduct did an army--confessedly the arbiter of its own movements and plans at the opening of the campaign--forfeit that free agency--either to the extent of the extremity supposed, or of any approximation to that extremity?
Now of these four possible questions in the minds of all those who condemn the convention of Cintra, it is obvious that the King's warrant supposes only the three latter to exist (since, though it allows inquiry to be made into the individual convention, it no where questions the tolerability of a convention _in genere_); and it is no less obvious that the Board, acting under that warrant, has noticed only the last--i.e.by what series of military movements the army was brought into a state of difficulty which justified _a_ convention (the Board taking for granted throughout--1st, That such a state could exist; 2ndly, That it actually did exist; and 3rdly, That--if it existed, and accordingly justified _some imaginable_ convention--it must therefore of necessity justify _this_ convention).
Having thus shewn that it is on the last question only that the nation could, in deference to the Board of Inquiry, surrender or qualify any opinion which, it had previously given--let us ask what answer is gained, from the proceedings of that Board, to the charge involved even in this last question (premising however--first--that this charge was never explicitly made by the public, or at least was enunciated only in the form of a conjecture--and 2ndly that the answer to it is collected chiefly from the depositions of the parties accused)?
Now the whole sum of their answer amounts to no more than this--that, in the opinion of some part of the English staff, an opportunity was lost on the 21st of exchanging the comparatively slow process of reducing the French army by siege for the brilliant and summary one of a _coup-de-main_.
This opportunity, be it observed, was offered only by Gen.

Junot's presumption in quitting his defensive positions, and coming out to meet the English army in the field; so that it was an advantage so much over and above what might fairly have been calculated upon: at any rate, if _this_ might have been looked for, still the accident of battle, by which a large part of the French army was left in a situation to be cut off, (to the loss of which advantage Sir A.Wellesley ascribes the necessity of a convention) could surely never have been anticipated; and therefore the British army was, even after that loss, in as prosperous a state as it had from the first any right to expect.

Hence it is to be inferred, that Sir A.W.must have entered on this campaign with a predetermination to grant a convention in any case, excepting in one single case which he knew to be in the gift of only very extraordinary good fortune.