d made familiar--divinely-tempered sentiments and the
purest notions concerning the duties and true dignity of individual and
social man in all situations and under all trials. By so readily
acceding to the prayers with which the Spaniards and Portugueze
entreated our assistance, we had proved to them that we were not wanting
in fellow-feeling. Therefore might we be admitted to be judges between
them and their enemies--unexceptionable judges--more competent even than
a dispassionate posterity, which, from the very want comparatively of
interest and passion, might be in its examination remiss and negligent,
and therefore in its decision erroneous. We, their contemporaries, were
drawn towards them as suffering beings; but still their sufferings were
not ours, nor could be; and we seemed to stand at that due point of
distance from which right and wrong might be fairly looked at and seen
in their just proportions. Every thing conspired to prepossess the
Spaniards and Portugueze in our favour, and to give the judgment of the
British Nation authority in their eyes. Strange, then, would be their
first sensations, when, upon further trial, instead of a growing
sympathy, they met with demonstrations of a state of sentiment and
opinion abhorrent from their own. A shock must have followed upon this
discovery, a shock to their confidence--not perhaps at first in us, but
in themselves: for, like all men under the agitation of extreme passion,
no doubt they had before experienced occasional misgivings that they
were subject to error and distraction from afflictions pressing too
violently upon them. These flying apprehensions would now take a fixed
place; and that moment would be most painful. If they continued to
respect our opinion, so far must they have mistrusted themselves: fatal
mistrust at such a crisis! Their passion of just vengeance, their
indignation, their aspiring hopes, everything that elevated and cheared,
must have departed from them. But this bad influence, the _excess_ of
the outrage would mitigate or prevent; and we may be assured that they
rather recoiled from Allies who had thus by their actions
discountenanced and condemned efforts, which the most solemn testimony
of conscience had avouched to them were just;--that they recoiled from
us with that loathing and contempt which unexpected, determined, and
absolute hostility, upon points of dearest interest will for ever
create.

Again: independence and liberty were t