dignity, and assert every right which in all distinct and independent communities naturally flows from the equality of mankind, and from the sovereignty of the people.

The retreat of the French armies from Portugal, is a happy event so far as it may leave the people of that kingdom independent; that is if they have wisdom and patriotism sufficient to form a free government for themselves, the exact counterpart of their old government, if the most wretched mixture of statecraft and priestcraft united, aud completely vitiated in all its branches deserve the name of government, the beads of which sneakingly deserted the people, as soon as they perceived any danger, and leaving them entirely to shift for themselves fled to America. If the Portuguese, however, should be content with a government in which all the abuses of church and state shall be preserved, and a system of slavery, intolerance and persecution be re-established, much more would it have been for their interest had the French remained masters of the country. Napoleon would at least have got rid of the worst and most odious part of the old government, a popish establishment in which toleration was unknown, the people were sunk in the dregs of superstition, and the inquisition formed a branch of the established church.

An impartial observer who was ignorant of the character of British troops, were be to read the extravagant exultations with which our journals have abounded for this month past, would not be led to form the highest opinion of their skill or magnanimity. What is the sum and substance of our boasted triumphs! Lord Wellington was so strongly posted that the enemy did not deem it prudent to attack him; he obtained this position, it must not be forgotten, after having, during the preceding campaign retreared many hundred miles, entirely from Spain, and through the greater part of Portugal to its frontiers: he indeed boasted of several victories; but these victories were uniformly followed by retreats; although he represented the enemy in a starving condition, and possessing no part of the country but what was covered by their army. It is true that neither his lordship nor those in the habit of panegyrising him as a second Marlborough," ever used the word retreat: no: for although his sick and wounded were,, after the wonderfully extolled victory of Talavera, left behind him to the amount of 1,500 men, yet in all these various "retreats" we read only " of a change "of position," which we are assured was always effected with the utmost skill. And what have the French done this campaign, which the British did not do the last? They have retreated; that retreat has also been conducted, so say their enemies, with the utmost skill; whether they will be driven out of Portugal and Spain, remains to be seen; and till they are driven to the frontiers of the latter country, neither the British general nor his panegyrists will

bate any great reason, on comparison, for boasting. What after all have we gained? Are the French drawing the British army after them, as our ministerialists affirmed Lord Wellington drew the French army after him during the whole of the last campaign? Has the retreat of the French armies been attended with a single battle of moment? will any one pretend that it has been more rapid than the retreat of Lord Wellington last year, or so calamitous as the retreat of the army of Sir John Moore?

The conduct of the campaigns in Spain and Portugal, may teach a lesson of humility to both the hostile parties. The first army sent from Britain was, after experiencing numberless hardships, and much ill treatment from the people whose battles it was fighting, compelled to leave the country. Since that period, although another British army has claimed several victories, yet they were of such trifling advantage that every victory was the sure signal for retreat. The French have not been wanting in promises, and vauntings. They were to have finished the conquest of Spain and Portugal, and to have driven the English army into the sea; this was, as the event proves, promising more than they could perform, and they in their turn have been compelled to retreat. Such events. ought to teach both nations the folly of vain glory, and the expediency if not the necessity of settling the affairs of Spain and Portugal, not by the sword but by negociation.

To add to our national delusion, we perceive the thanks of the two houses are to be voted to Lord Wellington for having expelled the French from Portugal. This compliment is now become so common, that a commander of skill and courage, who is not a professed partisan of the minister of the day, and who is not interested in the support of abuses, would scarcely deem it worth his acceptance. What has been the constant practice of ministers during the preset war? The moment news has arrived of what is termed a victory, without waiting for information as to the nature of such victory, or whether it was not followed by an immediate and precipitate retreat, leaving the sick and wounded to the mercy of the enemy, relying solely on the word of the persons most interested, without a moment's consideration as to the general conduct of the campaign, or waiting for its close ;-although the enemy claim the victory, appealing for evidence to the number of prisoners taken, and of the sick and wounded left in their possession, and to the retreat of the hostile army;-although men of the first military talents and experience have, from these and various other circumstances, their doubts as to the proper conduct of the commander, and he himself acknowledges he was retreating from an enemy destitute of provisions, and held in such abhorrence, that he was in possession of no part of the country, but the ground he covered→

yet, notwithstanding these suspicious circumstances, votes of thanks, peerages, and pensions have been heaped on the retreating commander, and his panegyrists in the height of their servile infatuation, have forced comparisons by their ridiculous panegyrics, elevating him to the very pinnacle of the military profession, and dubbing him "A second MARLBOROUGH!"

"But what are the brilliant exploits which demand the present vote of thanks? The enemy has retreated: from what causeLet our officers answer the question. One of their letters from Lisbon states:-" The enemy must have suffered dreadfully from "want of provisions: their necessities have compelled them to sub❝sist upon every kind of animal within their reach. . . . Their re"treat is conducted with great ability; and their line of march is

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SO well covered that we have hitherto been able to take very few " prisoners." So far from leaving 1500 sick and wounded behind them, another letter states-" That they waited to bury their dead." A third letter states "The French to confuse our plans, had "marched in three columns from Santarem. Two were immediately followed: but no mode or means were sufficient to bring "them to battle: skirmishing was continued, and some prisoners "were sent to the rear till we reached Pombal, where Massena "seeing himself so closely run, halted; and by position kept us "in check, until his baggage had advanced further in security.” Now, we confess we are so ignorant of military matters, that we can form no conception, how one army in pursuit of another, and making use of every means to bring the fugitives to action, should suffer those fugitives" seeing themselves so closely run," to keep the pursuing army in check, until the baggage of the fugitives had advanced in farther security! But the enemy has retreated, and although that retreat was not occasioned by any of the operations of Lord Wellington (who had ever since his own retreat to the frontiers of Portugal, kept close within his lines strongly entrenched by nature and art) but solely to the want of provisions ;—although that retreat had been conducted in the opinion of our officers with the most consummate skill, with little interruption on the part of the British commander;-and although it be yet very uncertain how the campaign may terminate, yet the thanks of the two houses are to be voted; an honour which was once thought due only on extraordinary occasions, when victories the most decisive and brilliant, were the fruits of skill, brayery, and perseverance the most extraordinary. The grand end of all such votes, it is evident, is to increase the popular delusion; to reconcile a people oppressed with taxes, and cursed with an enormously extended paper circulation, which has occasioned the disappearance of their specie, and doubled the price of all the necessaries of life, to the continuance of the

war, and by thus wasting the remainder of their resources, accelerate the ruin now staring them in the face.

Horrible are the details of the ravages of the French army, and although we both hope and believe, that much exaggeration has been used in order to excite the greater odium against the enemy ;* yet such is the wickedness of war in itself, abstractedly considered, so much does it naturally tend to blunt the feelings and to steel the hearts of those habitually engaged in it, that few instances can be brought in which a retreating army followed by an enemy, but what was guilty of horrible excesses, and the curse of the country it passed through: these excesses it appears have not, during the retreat of the French, been confined to one party; for we are informed that" the Portuguese troops have had opportunities of making the most severe retaliation. By the premature destruc❝tion of a bridge over which the enemy were to pass in their retreat, " about 800 of their troops were cut off, nearly the whole of which

were killed, the advance of the allies refusing to give any quarter;" that is eight hundred Frenchmen were massacred! But it is only French enormities which are the objects of reprobation, and the Portuguese who are to be the peculiar objects of commiseration. Their calamities are such as to "draw down iron tears even from Pluto's "cheeks." The authors of the system of torture pursued in Ireland; the apologists and approvers of the murderers of Indian princes, and the devastators of Indian provinces; the contrivers of the scenes of robbery, massacre, and conflagration at Copenhagen; of the burning of Flushing, and the destruction of the houses and inhabitants by Congreve rockets; (we suppose we shall shortly hear from some "gentleman" of the Morning Post, of the insurrection of the inhabitants at these places, and their invitation to the English to deliver them:) the uniform advocates of the infernal but, happily, abolished slave trade; the war shouters at Lloyds ;-all-all unite in exclaiming, "that the ravages of the enemy present a spectacle "unknown to the civilised world since the Huns desolated Europe :"+ and that their" conduct rendered them a disgrace to the cause of hu"manity, and to the character of christianity, which in an enlightened

Some of these stories, such as the ravishing of old women 70 or 80 years of age, who were " afterwards confined until disease made them loath"some to the hell-hounds themselves; and infant children surviving the 66 scene of horror, and likely to live, though with worms of three or four " inches in length crawling in their flesh,”'—savour too much of the ridiculous to be true: but lying appears to be a necessary ingredient in the art of war; the lists of killed, wounded, and missing, as given on both sides, afford ample evidence what little dependance is to be placed in the accounts of either of the hostile parties.

† See Lord Harrowby's speech, in the Lords. Morn. Chron. April 10.

age like the present should have taught them better." Let us then briefly examine the nature of these professions of “ humanity "and christianity," and bring them to the true touchstone, the conduct of the professors.

We shall not even glance at the enormities committed in Ireland, and which drew forth that severe sarcasm from that brave and humane commander, the late Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who on his succeeding to the chief command in Ireland, declared in a proclamation, that the insubordination, and the ravages committed by the army were such as to render it " formidable only to its friends;" but we shall refer to two or three instances during the present war, which may serve to shew the peculiar right of the British nation to complain of the "unparalleled excesses of the French!"-At the taking of Maldonado, a Spanish settlement, in Nov. 1806, a naval officer on board his Majesty's ship Leda, writes as follows:- "A "council of war was assembled, the result of which was, to pro"ceed and attack another settlement about 90 miles below Monte "Video, called Maldonado. The next day, the 29th, we arrived "there, and it being a weak town, disembarked our troops, a"mounting to near a thousand. In the evening they stormed and put to the rout, with much slaughter, a considerable army of the Spaniards. There was an island about two miles from the main, "which was well fortified; but the garrison capitulated, and thus "saved their lives.—Yesterday I went on shore to view the town, "when it presented a scene of desolation that I wish never to wit"ness again. On our soldiers entering the town, the cry through. " out the army was-Remember General Beresford !* AND NO QUARTER WAS SHEWN; in one house alone there were twenty Spaniards bayonetted: plunder ensued, and furniture of all de"scriptions was lying about, quite destroyed!" This expedition was undertaken, and, let it be recollected, was undertaken for the express purpose of extending our TRADE.

But it is somewhat remarkable that the enormities with which the French are too justly charged on the present occasion, have been charged against the British armies in their former retreats in Spain and Fortugal; so that if the writers on both sides are to be credited, the one have done little more than follow the example of the other. Indeed, some of the charges against the British army have been brought by their own officers. The following are a few of the particulars detailed by an officer in Sir John Moore's army, in a letter dated from Villa Franca, Jan. 1809.‡

* Account of the meeting for the relief of the Portuguese-Morning Post, April 25.

+ General Beresford had been taken prisoner at Buenos Ayres, but it does not appear that he had met with any particular ill treatment.

See Pol. Rev. Vol. VI. p. 418.