ion, and to sanction this principle,
they are virtually his Allies: their weapons may be against him, but he
will laugh at their weapons,--for he knows, though they themselves do
not, that their souls are for him. Look at the preamble to the
Armistice! In what is omitted and what is inserted, the French Ruler
could not have fashioned it more for his own purpose if he had traced it
with his own hand. We have then trampled upon a fundamental principle of
justice, and countenanced a prime maxim of iniquity; thus adding, in an
unexampled degree, the foolishness of impolicy to the heinousness of
guilt. A conduct thus grossly unjust and impolitic, without having the
hatred which it inspires neutralised by the contempt, is made
contemptible by utterly wanting that colour of right which authority and
power, put forth in defence of our Allies--in asserting their just
claims and avenging their injuries, might have given. But we, instead of
triumphantly displaying our power towards our enemies, have
ostentatiously exercised it upon our friends; reversing here, as every
where, the practice of sense and reason;--conciliatory even to abject
submission where we ought to have been haughty and commanding,--and
repulsive and tyrannical where we ought to have been gracious and kind.
Even a common law of good breeding would have served us here, had we
known how to apply it. We ought to have endeavoured to raise the
Portugueze in their own estimation by concealing our power in comparison
with theirs; dealing with them in the spirit of those mild and humane
delusions, which spread such a genial grace over the intercourse, and
add so much to the influence of love in the concerns of private life. It
is a common saying, presume that a man is dishonest, and that is the
readiest way to make him so: in like manner it may be said, presume that
a nation is weak, and that is the surest course to bring it to
weakness,--if it be not rouzed to prove its strength by applying it to
the humiliation of your pride. The Portugueze had been weak; and, in
connection with their Allies the Spaniards, they were prepared to become
strong. It was, therefore, doubly incumbent upon us to foster and
encourage them--to look favourably upon their efforts--generously to
give them credit upon their promises--to hope with them and for them;
and, thus anticipating and foreseeing, we should, by a natural
operation of love, have contributed to create the merits which were
antic