ndirectly enabled to carry
off their booty, we have already seen, that a concession was made which
is still more enormous; viz. that all subjects of France, or of powers
in alliance with France, domiciliated in Portugal or resident there, and
all natives of Portugal who have accepted situations under _the French
government_, &c., shall have their _property_ of every kind guaranteed
to them by the British army. By articles 16th and 17th, their _persons_
are placed under the like protection. 'The French' (Article XVI.) 'shall
be at liberty either to accompany the French army, or to remain in
Portugal;' 'And the Portugueze' (Article XVII.) 'shall not be rendered
accountable for their political conduct during the period of the
occupation of the country by the French army: they all are placed under
the protection of the British commanders, and shall sustain no injury in
their property or persons.'

I have animadverted, heretofore, upon the unprofessional eagerness of
our Generals to appear in the character of negotiators when the sword
would have done them more service than the pen. But, if they had
confined themselves to mere military regulations, they might indeed with
justice have been grievously censured as injudicious commanders, whose
notion of the honour of armies was of a low pitch, and who had no
conception of the peculiar nature of the service in which they were
engaged: but the censure must have stopped here. Whereas, by these
provisions, they have shewn that they have never reflected upon the
nature of military authority as contra-distinguished from civil. French
example had so far dazzled and blinded them, that the French army is
suffered to denominate itself '_the French government_;' and, from the
whole tenour of these instruments, (from the preamble, and these
articles especially,) it should seem that our Generals fancied
themselves and their army to be _the British government_. For these
regulations, emanating from a mere military authority, are purely civil;
but of such a kind, that no power on earth could confer a right to
establish them. And this trampling upon the most sacred rights--this
sacrifice of the consciousness of a self-preserving principle, without
which neither societies nor governments can exist, is not made by our
generals in relation to subjects of their own sovereign, but to an
independent nation, our ally, into whose territories we could not have
entered but from its confidence in our fri