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Portugal. In 1797, indeed, our Government condescended to receive a
Portuguese plenipotentiary, but merely for the purpose of plundering his
country of some millions of money, and to insult it by shutting up its
representative as a State prisoner in the Temple. Of this violation of
the laws of civilized nations, Spain never complained, nor had Portugal
any means to avenge it. After four years of negotiation, and an
expenditure of thirty millions, the imbecile Spanish premier supported
demands made by our Government, which, if assented to, would have left
Her Most Faithful Majesty without any territory in Europe, and without
any place of refuge in America. Circumstances not permitting your
country to send any but pecuniary succours, Portugal would have become an
easy prey to the united Spanish and French forces, had the marauders
agreed about the partition of the spoil. Their disunion, the consequence
of their avidity, saved it from ruin, but not from pillage. A province
was ceded to Spain, the banks and the navigation of a river to France,
and fifty millions to the private purse of the Bonaparte family.

It might have been supposed that such renunciations, and such offerings,
would have satiated ambition, as well as cupidity; but, though the
Cabinet of Lisbon was in peace with the Cabinet of St. Cloud, the
pretensions and encroachments of the latter left the former no rest.
While pocketing tributes it required commercial monopolies, and when its
commerce was favoured, it demanded seaports to ensure the security of its
trade. Its pretensions rose in proportion to the condescensions of the
State it, oppressed. With the money and the value of the diamonds which
Portugal has paid in loans, in contributions, in requisitions, in
donations, in tributes, and in presents, it might have supported, during
ten years, an army of one hundred thousand men; and could it then have
been worse situated than it has been since, and is still at this moment?

But the manner of extorting, and the individuals employed to extort, were
more humiliating to its dignity and independence than the extortions
themselves were injurious to its resources. The first revolutionary
Ambassador Bonaparte sent thither evinced both his ingratitude and his
contempt.

Few of our many upstart generals have more illiberal sentiments, and more
vulgar and insolent manners, than General Lasnes. The son of a publican
and a smuggler, he was a smuggler hims