universal
rising of the Peninsula, under the pressure and in the face of the most
tremendous military power which ever existed, is evidence which cannot
be too much insisted upon; and is decisive upon this subject, as
involving a question of virtue and moral sentiment. All ranks were
penetrated with one feeling: instantaneous and universal was the
acknowledgement. If there have been since individual fallings-off; those
have been caused by that kind of after-thoughts which are the bastard
offspring of selfishness. The matter was brought home to Spain; and no
Spaniard has offended herein with a still conscience.--It is to the
worldlings of our own country, and to those who think without carrying
their thoughts far enough, that I address myself. Let them know, there
is no true wisdom without imagination; no genuine sense;--that the man,
who in this age feels no regret for the ruined honour of other Nations,
must be poor in sympathy for the honour of his own Country; and that, if
he be wanting here towards that which circumscribes the whole, he
neither has--nor can have--social regard for the lesser communities
which Country includes. Contract the circle, and bring him to his
family; such a man cannot protect _that_ with dignified loves. Reduce
his thoughts to his own person; he may defend himself,--what _he_ deems
his honour; but it is the _action_ of a brave man from the impulse of
the brute, or the motive of a coward.

But it is time to recollect that this vindication of human feeling began
from an _hypothesis_,--that the _outward_ state of the mass of the
Spanish people would be improved by the French usurpation. To this I now
give an unqualified denial. Let me also observe to those men, for whose
infirmity this hypothesis was tolerated,--that the true point of
comparison does not lie between what the Spaniards have been under a
government of their own, and what they may become under French
domination; but between what the Spaniards may do (and, in all
likelihood, will do) for themselves, and what Frenchmen would do for
them. But,--waiving this,--the sweeping away of the most splendid
monuments of art, and rifling of the public treasuries in the conquered
countries, are an apt prologue to the tragedy which is to ensue. Strange
that there are men who can be so besotted as to see, in the decrees of
the Usurper concerning feudal tenures and a worn-out Inquisition, any
other evidence than that of insidiousness and of a con