The letter of the two Emperors was fully and most ably answered in an official note. The King’s readiness and desire to negotiate a peace on terms consistent with his own honour, and with the permanent security of Europe, were again declared. If the condition of the continent were one of agitation and of wretchedness, if many states had been overthrown, and many more were still menaced with subversion, it was a consolation to the King to reflect, that no part of those convulsions could be in any degree imputable to him. Most willing was he to acknowledge that all such dreadful changes were indeed contrary to the policy of Great Britain. And if the cause of so much misery was to be found in the stagnation of commercial intercourse, although he could not be expected to hear with unqualified regret that the system devised for the destruction of the commerce of his subjects had recoiled upon its authors or its instruments, yet it was neither in his disposition, nor in the character of the people over whom he reigned, to rejoice in the privations and unhappiness even of the nations which were combined against him. He anxiously desired the termination of the sufferings of the continent. The war in which he was engaged was entered into for the immediate object of national safety; but, in its progress, new obligations had been imposed upon him, in behalf of powers whom the aggressions of a common enemy had compelled to make common cause with him, or who had solicited his assistance and support in the vindication of their national independence. The interests of Portugal and of Sicily were confided to his friendship and protection; and he was connected for peace, as well as for war, with the King of Sweden. To Spain he was not yet bound by any formal instrument, but he had, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his mind than the most solemn treaties. He therefore assumed, that, in an overture made to him for entering into negotiations for a general peace, his relations subsisting with the Spanish monarchy had been distinctly taken into consideration, and that the government acting in the name of his Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand VII., was understood to be a party to any negotiation in which he was invited to engage.