nds and debased in their morals by revolutionary practices and
habits of warfare; and the youth of the country are rendered desperate
by oppression, which, leaving no choice in their occupation, discharges
them from all responsibility to their own consciences. How powerful then
must have been the action of such incitements upon a people so
circumstanced! The actual sight, and, far more, the imaginary sight and
handling of these treasures, magnified by the romantic tales which must
have been spread about them, would carry into every town and village an
antidote for the terrors of conscription; and would rouze men, like the
dreams imported from the new world when the first discoverers and
adventurers returned, with their ingots and their gold dust--their
stories and their promises, to inflame and madden the avarice of the
old. 'What an effect,' says the Governor of Cadiz, 'must it have upon
the people,' (he means the Spanish people,) 'to know that a single
soldier was carrying away 2580 livres tournois!' What an effect, (he
might have said also,) must it have upon the French!--I direct the
reader's attention to this, because it seems to have been overlooked;
and because some of the public journals, speaking of the Convention,
(and, no doubt, uttering the sentiments of several of their
readers,)--say 'that they are disgusted with the transaction, not
because the French have been permitted to carry off a few diamonds, or
some ingots of silver; but because we confessed, by consenting to the
treaty, that an army of 35,000 British troops, aided by the Portugueze
nation, was not able to compel 20,000 French to surrender at
discretion.' This is indeed the root of the evil, as hath been shewn;
and it is the curse of this treaty, that the several parts of it are of
such enormity as singly to occupy the attention and to destroy
comparison and coexistence. But the people of Great Britain are
disgusted both with the one and the other. They bewail the violation of
the principle: if the value of the things carried off had been in itself
trifling, their grief and their indignation would have been scarcely
less. But it is manifest, from what has been said, that it was not
trifling; and that therefore, (upon that account as well as upon
others,) this permission was no less impolitic than it was unjust and
dishonourable.

In illustrating these articles of the Armistice and Convention, by which
the French were both expressly permitted and i