des of intercourse, which one
army may demand from another according to the laws of war. They were not
soldiers in any thing but the power of soldiers, and the outward frame
of an army. During their occupation of Portugal, the laws and customs of
war had never been referred to by them, but as a plea for some enormity,
to the aggravated oppression of that unhappy country! Pillage,
sacrilege, and murder--sweeping murder and individual assassination, had
been proved against them by voices from every quarter. They had outlawed
themselves by their offences from membership in the community of war,
and from every species of community acknowledged by reason. But even,
should any one be so insensible as to question this, he will not at all
events deny, that the French ought to have been dealt with as having put
on a double character. For surely they never considered themselves
merely as an army. They had dissolved the established authorities of
Portugal, and had usurped the civil power of the government; and it was
in this compound capacity, under this twofold monstrous shape, that they
had exercised, over the religion and property of the country, the most
grievous oppressions. What then remained to protect them but their
power?--Right they had none,--and power! it is a mortifying
consideration, but I will ask if Bonaparte, (nor do I mean in the
question to imply any thing to his honour,) had been in the place of Sir
Hew Dalrymple, what would he have thought of their power?--Yet before
this shadow the solid substance of _justice_ melted away.

And this leads me from the contemplation of their errors in the estimate
and application of means, to the contemplation of their heavier errors
and worse blindness in regard to ends. The British Generals acted as if
they had no purpose but that the enemy should be removed from the
country in which they were, upon _any_ terms. Now the evacuation of
Portugal was not the prime object, but the manner in which that event
was to be brought about; this ought to have been deemed first both in
order and importance;--the French were to be subdued, their ferocious
warfare and heinous policy to be confounded; and in this way, and no
other, was the deliverance of that country to be accomplished. It was
not for the soil, or for the cities and forts, that Portugal was valued,
but for the human feeling which was there; for the rights of human
nature which might be there conspicuously asserted; for a triump