refore, that permission to carry off
the booty was distinctly expressed; and, if it had not been so, that
the principle of justice could not here be preserved; as a violation of
it must necessarily have followed from other conditions of the treaty.
Sir Hew Dalrymple himself, before the Court of Inquiry, has told us, in
two letters (to Generals Beresford and Friere,) that 'such part of the
plunder as was in money, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
identify;' and, consequently, the French could not be prevented from
carrying it away with them. From the same letters we learn, that 'the
French were intending to carry off a considerable part of their plunder,
by calling it public money, and saying that it belonged to the military
chest; and that their evasions of the article were most shameful, and
evinced a want of probity and honour, which was most disgraceful to
them.' If the French had given no other proofs of their want of such
virtues, than those furnished by this occasion, neither the Portugueze,
nor Spanish, nor British nations would condemn them, nor hate them as
they now do; nor would this article of the Convention have excited such
indignation. For the French, by so acting, could not deem themselves
breaking an engagement; no doubt they looked upon themselves as
injured,--that the failure in good faith was on the part of the British;
and that it was in the lawlessness of power, and by a mere quibble, that
this construction was afterwards put upon the article in question.

Widely different from the conduct of the British was that of the
Spaniards in a like case:--with high feeling did they, abating not a jot
or a tittle, enforce the principle of justice. 'How,' says the governor
of Cadiz to General Dupont in the same noble letter before alluded to,
'how,' says he, after enumerating the afflictions which his army, and
the tyrant who had sent it, had unjustly brought upon the Spanish
nation, (for of these, in _their_ dealings with the French, they never
for a moment lost sight,) 'how,' asks he, 'could you expect, that your
army should carry off from Spain the fruit of its rapacity, cruelty, and
impiety? how could you conceive this possible, or that we should be so
stupid or senseless?' And this conduct is as wise in reason as it is
true to nature. The Spanish people could have had no confidence in their
government, if it had not acted thus. These are the sympathies which,
prove that a government is paternal