The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 8

But the Portugueze _are_ a brave people--a people of great courage and worth! Conclusions, drawn from intercourse with certain cla.s.ses of the depraved inhabitants of Lisbon only, and which are true only with respect to them, have been hastily extended to the whole Nation, which has thus unjustly suffered both in our esteem and in that of all Europe.

In common with their neighbours the Spaniards, they _were_ making a universal, zealous, and fearless effort; and, whatever may be the final issue, the very act of having risen under the pressure and in the face of the most tremendous military power which the earth has ever seen--is itself evidence in their favour, the strongest and most comprehensive which can be given; a transcendent glory! which, let it be remembered, no subsequent failures in duty on their part can forfeit. This they must have felt--that they had furnished an ill.u.s.trious example; and that nothing can abolish their claim upon the good wishes and upon the grat.i.tude of mankind, which is--and will be through all ages their due.

At such a time, then, injuries and insults from any quarter would have been deplorable; but, proceeding from us, the evil must have been aggravated beyond calculation. For we have, throughout Europe, the character of a sage and meditative people. Our history has been read by the degraded Nations of the Continent with admiration, and some portions of it with awe; with a recognition of superiority and distance, which was honourable to us--salutary for those to whose hearts, in their depressed state, it could find entrance--and promising for the future condition of the human race. We have been looked up to as a people who have acted n.o.bly; whom their const.i.tution of government has enabled to speak and write freely, and who therefore have thought comprehensively; as a people among whom philosophers and poets, by their surpa.s.sing genius--their wisdom--and knowledge of human nature, have circulated--and 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 a.s.sistance, 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 dispa.s.sionate posterity, which, from the very want comparatively of interest and pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured 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 the blessings for which the people of the Peninsula were contending--immediate independence, which was not to be gained but by modes of exertion from which liberty must ensue.

Now, liberty--healthy, matured, time-honoured liberty--this is the growth and peculiar boast of Britain; and Nature herself, by encircling with the ocean the country which we inhabit, has proclaimed that this mighty Nation is for ever to be her own ruler, and that the land is set apart for the home of immortal independence. Judging then from these first fruits of British Friends.h.i.+p, what bewildering and depressing and hollow thoughts must the Spaniards and Portugueze have entertained concerning the real value of these blessings, if the people who have possessed them longest, and who ought to understand them best, could send forth an army capable of enacting the oppression and baseness of the Convention of Cintra; if the government of that people could sanction this treaty; and if, lastly, this distinguished and favoured people themselves could suffer it to be held forth to the eyes of men as expressing the sense of their hearts--as an image of their understandings.

But it did not speak their sense--it was not endured--it was not submitted to in their hearts. Bitter was the sorrow of the people of Great Britain when the tidings first came to their ears, when they first fixed their eyes upon this covenant--overwhelming was their astonishment, tormenting their shame; their indignation was tumultuous; and the burthen of the past would have been insupportable, if it had not involved in its very nature a sustaining hope for the future. Among many alleviations, there was one, which, (not wisely, but overcome by circ.u.mstances) all were willing to admit;--that the event was so strange and uncouth, exhibiting such discordant characteristics of innocent fatuity and enormous guilt, that it could not without violence be thought of as indicative of a general const.i.tution of things, either in the country or the government; but that it was a kind of _lusus naturae_, in the moral world--a solitary straggler out of the circ.u.mference of Nature's law--a monster which could not propagate, and had no birth-right in futurity. Accordingly, the first expectation was that the government would deem itself under the necessity of disanulling the Convention; a necessity which, though in itself a great evil, appeared small in the eyes of judicious men, compared with the consequences of admitting that such a contract could be binding. For they, who had signed and ratified it, had not only glaringly exceeded all power which could be supposed to be vested in them as holding a military office; but, in the exercise of political functions, they had framed ordinances which neither the government, nor the Nation, nor any Power on earth, could confer upon them a right to frame: therefore the contract was self-destroying from the beginning. It is a wretched oversight, or a wilful abuse of terms still more wretched, to speak of the good faith of a Nation as being pledged to an act which was not a shattering of the edifice of justice, but a subversion of its foundations. One man cannot sign away the faculty of reason in another; much less can one or two individuals do this for a whole people.

Therefore the contract was void, both from its injustice and its absurdity; and the party, with whom it was made, must have known it to be so. It could not then but be expected by many that the government would reject it. Moreover, extraordinary outrages against reason and virtue demand that extraordinary sacrifices of atonement should be made upon their altars; and some were encouraged to think that a government might upon this impulse rise above itself, and turn an exceeding disgrace into true glory, by a public profession of shame and repentance for having appointed such unworthy instruments; that, this being acknowledged, it would clear itself from all imputation of having any further connection with what had been done, and would provide that the Nation should as speedily as possible, be purified from all suspicion of looking upon it with other feelings than those of abhorrence. The people knew what had been their own wishes when the army was sent in aid of their Allies; and they clung to the faith, that their wishes and the aims of the Government must have been in unison; and that the guilt would soon be judicially fastened upon those who stood forth as princ.i.p.als, and who (it was hoped) would be found to have fulfilled only their own will and pleasure,--to have had no explicit commission or implied encouragement for what they had done,--no accessaries in their crime. The punishment of these persons was antic.i.p.ated, not to satisfy any cravings of vindictive justice (for these, if they could have existed in such a case, had been thoroughly appeased already: for what punishment could be greater than to have brought upon themselves the sentence pa.s.sed upon them by the voice of their countrymen?); but for this reason--that a judicial condemnation of the men, who were openly the proximate cause, and who were forgetfully considered as the single and sole originating source, would make our detestation of the effect more signally manifest.

These thoughts, if not welcomed without scruple and relied upon without fear, were at least encouraged; till it was recollected that the persons at the head of government had ordered that the event should be communicated to the inhabitants of the metropolis with signs of national rejoicing. No wonder if, when these rejoicings were called to mind, it was impossible to entertain the faith which would have been most consolatory. The evil appeared no longer as the forlorn monster which I have described. It put on another shape and was endued with a more formidable life--with power to generate and transmit after its kind. A new and alarming import was added to the event by this open testimony of gladness and approbation; which intimated--which declared--that the spirit, which swayed the individuals who were the ostensible and immediate authors of the Convention, was not confined to them; but that it was widely prevalent: else it could not have been found in the very council-seat; there, where if wisdom and virtue have not some influence, what is to become of the Nation in these times of peril? rather say, into what an abyss is it already fallen!

His Majesty's ministers, by this mode of communicating the tidings, indiscreet as it was unfeeling, had committed themselves. Yet still they might have recovered from the lapse, have awakened after a little time.

And accordingly, notwithstanding an annunciation so ominous, it was matter of surprise and sorrow to many, that the ministry appeared to deem the Convention binding, and that its terms were to be fulfilled.

There had indeed been only a choice of evils: but, of the two the worse--ten thousand times the worse--was fixed upon. The ministers, having thus officially applauded the treaty,--and, by suffering it to be carried into execution, made themselves a party to the transaction,--drew upon themselves those suspicions which will ever pursue the steps of public men who abandon the direct road which leads to the welfare of their country. It was suspected that they had taken this part against the dictates of conscience, and from selfishness and cowardice; that, from the first, they reasoned thus within themselves:--'If the act be indeed so criminal as there is cause to believe that the public will p.r.o.nounce it to be; and if it shall continue to be regarded as such; great odium must sooner or later fall upon those who have appointed the agents: and this odium, which will be from the first considerable, in spite of the astonishment and indignation of which the framers of the Convention may be the immediate object, will, when the astonishment has relaxed, and the angry pa.s.sions have died away, settle (for many causes) more heavily upon those who, by placing such men in the command, are the original source of the guilt and the dishonour. How then is this most effectually to be prevented? By endeavouring to prevent or to destroy, as far as may be, the odium attached to the act itself.' For which purpose it was suspected that the rejoicings had been ordered; and that afterwards (when the people had declared themselves so loudly),--partly upon the plea of the good faith of the Nation being pledged, and partly from a false estimate of the comparative force of the two obligations,--the Convention, in the same selfish spirit, was carried into effect: and that the ministry took upon itself a final responsibility, with a vain hope that, by so doing and incorporating its own credit with the transaction, it might bear down the censures of the people, and overrule their judgment to the super-inducing of a belief, that the treaty was not so unjust and inexpedient: and thus would be included--in one sweeping exculpation--the misdeeds of the servant and the master.

But,--whether these suspicions were reasonable or not, whatever motives produced a determination that the Convention should be acted upon,--there can be no doubt of the manner in which the ministry wished that the people should appreciate it; when the same persons, who had ordered that it should at first be received with rejoicing, availed themselves of his Majesty's high authority to give a harsh reproof to the City of London for having prayed 'that an enquiry might be inst.i.tuted into this dishonourable and unprecedented transaction.' In their pet.i.tion they styled it also 'an afflicting event--humiliating and degrading to the country, and injurious to his Majesty's Allies.' And for this, to the astonishment and grief of all sound minds, the pet.i.tioners were severely reprimanded; and told, among other admonitions, 'that it was inconsistent with the principles of British jurisprudence to p.r.o.nounce judgement without previous investigation.'

Upon this charge, as re-echoed in its general import by persons who have been over-awed or deceived, and by others who have been wilful deceivers, I have already incidentally animadverted; and repelled it, I trust, with becoming, indignation. I shall now meet the charge for the last time formally and directly; on account of considerations applicable to all times; and because the whole course of domestic proceedings relating to the Convention of Cintra, combined with menaces which have been recently thrown out in the lower House of Parliament, renders it too probable that a league has been framed for the purpose of laying further restraints upon freedom of speech and of the press; and that the reprimand to the City of London was devised by ministers as a preparatory overt act of this scheme; to the great abuse of the Sovereign's Authority, and in contempt of the rights of the Nation. In meeting this charge, I shall shew to what desperate issues men are brought, and in what woeful labyrinths they are entangled, when, under the pretext of defending inst.i.tuted law, they violate the laws of reason and nature for their own unhallowed purposes.

If the persons, who signed this pet.i.tion, acted inconsistently with the principles of British jurisprudence; the offence must have been committed by giving an answer, before adequate and lawful evidence had ent.i.tled them so to do, to one or other of these questions:--'What is the act? and who is the agent?'--or to both conjointly. Now the pet.i.tion gives no opinion upon the agent; it p.r.o.nounces only upon the act, and that some one must be guilty; but _who_--it does not take upon itself to say. It condemns the act; and calls for punishment upon the authors, whosoever they may be found to be; and does no more. After the a.n.a.lysis which has been made of the Convention, I may ask if there be any thing in this which deserves reproof; and reproof from an authority which ought to be most enlightened and most dispa.s.sionate,--as it is, next to the legislative, the most solemn authority in the Land.

It is known to every one that the privilege of complaint and pet.i.tion, in cases where the Nation feels itself aggrieved, _itself_ being the judge, (and who else ought to be, or can be?)--a privilege, the exercise of which implies condemnation of something complained of, followed by a prayer for its removal or correction--not only is established by the most grave and authentic charters of Englishmen, who have been taught by their wisest statesmen and legislators to be jealous over its preservation, and to call it into practice upon every reasonable occasion; but also that this privilege is an indispensable condition of all civil liberty. Nay, of such paramount interest is it to mankind, existing under any frame of Government whatsoever; that, either by law or custom, it has universally prevailed under all governments--from the Grecian and Swiss Democracies to the Despotisms of Imperial Rome, of Turkey, and of France under her present ruler. It must then be a high principle which could exact obeisance from governments at the two extremes of polity, and from all modes of government inclusively; from the best and from the worst; from magistrates acting under obedience to the stedfast law which expresses the general will; and from depraved and licentious tyrants, whose habit it is--to express, and to act upon, their own individual will. Tyrants have seemed to feel that, if this principle were acknowledged, the subject ought to be reconciled to any thing; that, by permitting the free exercise of this right alone, an adequate price was paid down for all abuses; that a standing pardon was included in it for the past, and a daily renewed indulgence for every future enormity. It is then melancholy to think that the time is come when an attempt has been made to tear, out of the venerable crown of the Sovereign of Great Britain, a gem which is in the very front of the turban of the Emperor of Morocco.--(_See Appendix D_.)

To enter upon this argument is indeed both astounding and humiliating: for the adversary in the present case is bound to contend that we cannot p.r.o.nounce upon evil or good, either in the actions of our own or in past times, unless the decision of a Court of Judicature has empowered us so to do. Why then have historians written? and why do we yield to the impulses of our nature, hating or loving--approving or condemning according to the appearances which their records present to our eyes?

But the doctrine is as nefarious as it is absurd. For those public events in which men are most interested, namely, the crimes of rulers and of persons in high authority, for the most part are such as either have never been brought before tribunals at all, or before unjust ones: for, though offenders may be in hostility with each other, yet the kingdom of guilt is not wholly divided against itself; its subjects are united by a general interest to elude or overcome that law which would bring them to condign punishment. Therefore to make a verdict of a Court of Judicature a necessary condition for enabling men to determine the quality of an act, when the 'head and front'--the life and soul of the offence may have been, that it eludes or rises above the reach of all judicature, is a contradiction which would be too gross to merit notice, were it not that men willingly suffer their understandings to stagnate.

And hence this rotten bog, rotten and unstable as the crude consistence of Milton's Chaos, 'smitten' (for I will continue to use the language of the poet) 'by the petrific mace--and bound with Gorgonian rigour by the look'--of despotism, is trans.m.u.ted; and becomes a high-way of adamant for the sorrowful steps of generation after generation.

Again: in cases where judicial inquiries can be and are inst.i.tuted, and are equitably conducted, this suspension of judgment, with respect to act or agent, is only supposed necessarily to exist in the Court itself; not in the witnesses, the plaintiffs or accusers, or in the minds even of the people who may be present. If the contrary supposition were realized, how could the arraigned person ever have been brought into Court? What would become of the indignation, the hope, the sorrow, or the sense of justice, by which the prosecutors, or the people of the country who pursued or apprehended the presumed criminal, or they who appear in evidence against him, are actuated? If then this suspension of judgment, by a law of human nature and a requisite of society, is not supposed _necessarily_ to exist--except in the minds of the Court; if this be undeniable in cases where the eye and ear-witnesses are few;--how much more so in a case like the present; where all, that const.i.tutes the essence of the act, is avowed by the agents themselves, and lies bare to the notice of the whole world?--Now it was in the character of complainants and denunciators, that the pet.i.tioners of the City of London appeared before his Majesty's throne; and they have been reproached by his Majesty's ministers under the cover of a sophism, which, if our anxiety to interpret favourably words sanctioned by the First Magistrate--makes us unwilling to think it a deliberate artifice meant for the delusion of the people, must however (on the most charitable comment) be p.r.o.nounced an evidence of no little heedlessness and self-delusion on the part of those who framed it.

To sum up the matter--the right of pet.i.tion (which, we have shewn as a general proposition, supposes a right to condemn, and is in itself an act of qualified condemnation) may in too many instances take the ground of absolute condemnation, both with respect to the crime and the criminal. It was confined, in this case, to the crime; but, if the City of London had proceeded farther, they would have been justifiable; because the delinquents had set their hands to their own delinquency.

The pet.i.tioners, then, are not only clear of all blame; but are ent.i.tled to high praise: and we have seen whither the doctrines lead, upon which they were condemned.--And now, mark the discord which will ever be found in the actions of men, where there is no inward harmony of reason or virtue to regulate the outward conduct.

Those ministers, who advised their Sovereign to reprove the City of London for uttering prematurely, upon a measure, an opinion in which they were supported by the unanimous voice of the nation, had themselves before publickly prejudged the question by ordering that the tidings should be communicated with rejoicings. One of their body has since attempted to wipe away this stigma by representing that these orders were given out of a just tenderness for the reputation of the generals, who would otherwise have appeared to be condemned without trial. But did these rejoicings leave the matter indifferent? Was not the _positive_ fact of thus expressing an opinion (above all in a case like this, in which surely no man could ever dream that there were any features of splendour) far stronger language of approbation, than the _negative_ fact could be of disapprobation? For these same ministers who had called upon the people of Great Britain to rejoice over the Armistice and Convention, and who reproved and discountenanced and suppressed to the utmost of their power every attempt at pet.i.tioning for redress of the injury caused by those treaties, have now made publick a doc.u.ment from which it appears that, 'when the instruments were first laid before his Majesty, the king felt himself compelled _at once_' (i.e. previously to all investigation) 'to express his disapprobation of those articles, in which stipulations were made directly affecting the interests or feelings of the Spanish and Portugueze nations.'

And was it possible that a Sovereign of a free country could be otherwise affected? It is indeed to be regretted that his Majesty's censure was not, upon this occasion, radical--and p.r.o.nounced in a sterner tone; that a Council was not in existence sufficiently intelligent and virtuous to advise the king to give full expression to the sentiments of his own mind; which, we may reasonably conclude, were in sympathy with those of a brave and loyal people. Never surely was there a public event more fitted to reduce men, in all ranks of society, under the supremacy of their common nature; to impress upon them one belief; to infuse into them one spirit. For it was not done in a remote corner by persons of obscure rank; but in the eyes of Europe and of all mankind; by the leading authorities, military and civil, of a mighty empire. It did not relate to a petty immunity, or a local and insulated privilege--but to the highest feelings of honour to which a Nation may either be calmly and gradually raised by a long course of independence, liberty, and glory; or to the level of which it may be lifted up at once, from a fallen state, by a sudden and extreme pressure of violence and tyranny. It not only related to these high feelings of honour; but to the fundamental principles of justice, by which life and property, that is the means of living, are secured.

A people, whose government had been dissolved by foreign tyranny, and which had been left to work out its salvation by its own virtues, prayed for our help. And whence were we to learn how that help could be most effectually given, how they were even to be preserved from receiving injuries instead of benefits at our hands,--whence were we to learn this but from their language and from our own hearts? They had spoken of unrelenting and inhuman wrongs; of patience wearied out; of the agonizing yoke cast off; of the blessed service of freedom chosen; of heroic aspirations; of constancy, and fort.i.tude, and perseverance; of resolution even to the death; of gladness in the embrace of death; of weeping over the graves of the slain, by those who had not been so happy as to die; of resignation under the worst final doom; of glory, and triumph, and punishment. This was the language which we heard--this was the devout hymn that was chaunted; and the responses, with which our country bore a part in the solemn service, were from her soul and from the depths of her soul.

O sorrow! O misery for England, the Land of liberty and courage and peace; the Land trustworthy and long approved; the home of lofty example and benign precept; the central orb to which, as to a fountain, the nations of the earth 'ought to repair, and in their golden urns draw light;'--O sorrow and shame for our country; for the gra.s.s which is upon her fields, and the dust which is in her graves;--for her good men who now look upon the day;--and her long train of deliverers and defenders, her Alfred, her Sidneys, and her Milton; whose voice yet speaketh for our reproach; and whose actions survive in memory to confound us, or to redeem!

For what hath been done? look at it: we have looked at it: we have handled it: we have pondered it steadily: we have tried it by the principles of absolute and eternal justice; by the sentiments of high-minded honour, both with reference to their general nature, and to their especial exaltation under present circ.u.mstances; by the rules of expedience; by the maxims of prudence, civil and military: we have weighed it in the balance of all these, and found it wanting; in that, which is most excellent, most wanting.

Our country placed herself by the side of Spain, and her fellow Nation; she sent an honourable portion of her sons to aid a suffering people to subjugate or destroy an army--but I degrade the word--a banded mult.i.tude of perfidious oppressors, of robbers and a.s.sa.s.sins, who had outlawed themselves from society in the wantonness of power; who were abominable for their own crimes, and on account of the crimes of him whom they served--to subjugate or destroy these; not exacting that it should be done within a limited time; admitting even that they might effect their purpose or not; she could have borne either issue, she was prepared for either; but she was not prepared for such a deliverance as hath been accomplished; not a deliverance of Portugal from French oppression, but of the oppressor from the anger and power (at least from the animating efforts) of the Peninsula: she was not prepared to stand between her Allies, and their worthiest hopes: that, when chastis.e.m.e.nt could not be inflicted, honour--as much as bad men could receive--should be conferred: that them, whom her own hands had humbled, the same hands and no other should exalt: that finally the sovereign of this horde of devastators, himself the destroyer of the hopes of good men, should have to say, through the mouth of his minister, and for the hearing of all Europe, that his army of Portugal had 'DICTATED THE TERMS OF ITS GLORIOUS RETREAT.'

I have to defend my countrymen: and, if their feelings deserve reverence, if there be any stirrings of wisdom in the motions of their souls, my task is accomplished. For here were no factions to blind; no dissolution of established authorities to confound; no ferments to distemper; no narrow selfish interests to delude. The object was at a distance; and it rebounded upon us, as with force collected from a mighty distance; we were calm till the very moment of transition; and all the people were moved--and felt as with one heart, and spake as with one voice. Every human being in these islands was unsettled; the most slavish broke loose as from fetters; and there was not an individual--it need not be said of heroic virtue, but of ingenuous life and sound discretion--who, if his father, his son, or his brother, or if the flower of his house had been in that army, would not rather that they had perished, and the whole body of their countrymen, their companions in arms, had perished to a man, than that a treaty should have been submitted to upon such conditions. This was the feeling of the people; an awful feeling: and it is from these oracles that rulers are to learn wisdom.

For, when the people speaks loudly, it is from being strongly possessed either by the G.o.dhead or the Demon; and he, who cannot discover the true spirit from the false, hath no ear for profitable communion. But in all that regarded the destinies of Spain, and her own as connected with them, the voice of Britain had the unquestionable sound of inspiration.

If the gentle pa.s.sions of pity, love, and grat.i.tude, be porches of the temple; if the sentiments of admiration and rivalry be pillars upon which the structure is sustained; if, lastly, hatred, and anger, and vengeance, be steps which, by a mystery of nature, lead to the House of Sanct.i.ty;--then was it manifest to what power the edifice was consecrated; and that the voice within was of Holiness and Truth.

Spain had risen not merely to be delivered and saved;--deliverance and safety were but intermediate objects;--regeneration and liberty were the end, and the means by which this end was to be attained; had their own high value; were determined and precious; and could no more admit of being departed from, than the end of being forgotten.--She had risen--not merely to be free; but, in the act and process of acquiring that freedom, to recompense herself, as it were in a moment, for all which she had suffered through ages; to levy, upon the false fame of a cruel Tyrant, large contributions of true glory; to lift herself, by the conflict, as high in honour--as the disgrace was deep to which her own weakness and vices, and the violence and perfidy of her enemies, had subjected her.

Let us suppose that our own Land had been so outraged; could we have been content that the enemy should be wafted from our sh.o.r.es as lightly as he came,--much less that he should depart ill.u.s.trated in his own eyes and glorified, singing songs of savage triumph and wicked gaiety?--No.--Should we not have felt that a high trespa.s.s--a grievous offence had been committed; and that to demand satisfaction was our first and indispensable duty? Would we not have rendered their bodies back upon our guardian ocean which had borne them hither; or have insisted that their haughty weapons should submissively kiss the soil which they had polluted? We should have been resolute in a defence that would strike awe and terror: this for our dignity:--moreover, if safety and deliverance are to be so fondly prized for their own sakes, what security otherwise could they have? Would it not be certain that the work, which had been so ill done to-day, we should be called upon to execute still more imperfectly and ingloriously to-morrow; that we should be summoned to an attempt that would be vain?

In like manner were the wise and heroic Spaniards moved. If an Angel from heaven had come with power to take the enemy from their grasp (I do not fear to say this, in spite of the dominion which is now re-extended over so large a portion of their Land), they would have been sad; they would have looked round them; their souls would have turned inward; and they would have stood like men defrauded and betrayed.

For not presumptuously had they taken upon themselves the work of chastis.e.m.e.nt. They did not wander madly about the world--like the Tamerlanes, or the Chengiz Khans, or the present barbarian Ravager of Europe--under a mock t.i.tle of Delegates of the Almighty, acting upon self-a.s.sumed authority. Their commission had been thrust upon them. They had been trampled upon, tormented, wronged--bitterly, wantonly wronged, if ever a people on the earth was wronged. And this it was which legitimately incorporated their law with the supreme conscience, and gave to them the deep faith which they have expressed--that their power was favoured and a.s.sisted by the Almighty.--These words are not uttered without a due sense of their awful import: but the Spirit of evil is strong: and the subject requires the highest mode of thinking and feeling of which human nature is capable.--Nor in this can they be deceived; for, whatever be the immediate issue for themselves, the final issue for their Country and Mankind must be good;--they are instruments of benefit and glory for the human race; and the Deity therefore is with them.

From these impulses, then, our brethren of the Peninsula had risen; they could have risen from no other. By these energies, and by such others as (under judicious encouragement) would naturally grow out of and unite with these, the mult.i.tudes, who have risen, stand; and, if they desert them, must fall.--Riddance, mere riddance--safety, mere safety--are objects far too defined, too inert and pa.s.sive in their own nature, to have ability either to rouze or to sustain. They win not the mind by any attraction of grandeur or sublime delight, either in effort or in endurance: for the mind gains consciousness of its strength to undergo only by exercise among materials which admit the impression of its power,--which grow under it, which bend under it,--which resist,--which change under its influence,--which alter either through its might or in its presence, by it or before it. These, during times of tranquillity, are the objects with which, in the studious walks of sequestered life, Genius most loves to hold intercourse; by which it is reared and supported;--these are the qualities in action and in object, in image, in thought, and in feeling, from communion with which proceeds originally all that is creative in art and science, and all that is magnanimous in virtue.--Despair thinks of _safety_, and hath no purpose; fear thinks of safety; despondency looks the same way:--but these pa.s.sions are far too selfish, and therefore too blind, to reach the thing at which they aim; even when there is in them sufficient dignity to have an aim.--All courage is a projection from ourselves; however short-lived, it is a motion of hope. But these thoughts bind too closely to something inward,--to the present and to the past,--that is, to the self which is or has been. Whereas the vigour of the human soul is from without and from futurity,--in breaking down limit, and losing and forgetting herself in the sensation and image of Country and of the human race; and, when she returns and is most restricted and confined, her dignity consists in the contemplation of a better and more exalted being, which, though proceeding from herself, she loves and is devoted to as to another.

In following the stream of these thoughts, I have not wandered from my course: I have drawn out to open day the truth from its recesses in the minds of my countrymen.--Something more perhaps may have been done: a shape hath perhaps been given to that which was before a stirring spirit. I have shewn in what manner it was their wish that the struggle with the adversary of all that is good should be maintained--by pure pa.s.sions and high actions. They forbid that their n.o.ble aim should be frustrated by measuring against each other things which are incommensurate--mechanic against moral power--body against soul. They will not suffer, without expressing their sorrow, that purblind calculation should wither the purest hopes in the face of all-seeing justice. These are times of strong appeal--of deep-searching visitation; when the best abstractions of the prudential understanding give way, and are included and absorbed in a supreme comprehensiveness of intellect and pa.s.sion; which is the perfection and the very being of humanity.

How base! how puny! how inefficient for all good purposes are the tools and implements of policy, compared with these mighty engines of Nature!--There is no middle course: two masters cannot be served:--Justice must either be enthroned above might, and the moral law take place of the edicts of selfish pa.s.sion; or the heart of the people, which alone can sustain the efforts of the people, will languish: their desires will not spread beyond the plough and the loom, the field and the fire-side: the sword will appear to them an emblem of no promise; an instrument of no hope; an object of indifference, of disgust, or fear.

Was there ever--since the earliest actions of men which have been transmitted by affectionate tradition or recorded by faithful history, or sung to the impa.s.sioned harp of poetry--was there ever a people who presented themselves to the reason and the imagination, as under more holy influences than the dwellers upon the Southern Peninsula; as rouzed more instantaneously from a deadly sleep to a more hopeful wakefulness; as a ma.s.s fluctuating with one motion under the breath of a mightier wind; as breaking themselves up, and settling into several bodies, in more harmonious order; as reunited and embattled under a standard which was reared to the sun with more authentic a.s.surance of final victory?--The superst.i.tion (I do not dread the word), which prevailed in these nations, may have checked many of my countrymen who would otherwise have exultingly accompanied me in the challenge which, under the shape of a question, I have been confidently uttering; as I know that this stain (so the same persons termed it) did, from the beginning, discourage their hopes for the cause. Short-sighted despondency!

Whatever mixture of superst.i.tion there might be in the religious faith or devotional practices of the Spaniards; this must have necessarily been trans.m.u.ted by that triumphant power, wherever that power was felt, which grows out of intense moral suffering--from the moment in which it coalesces with fervent hope. The chains of bigotry, which enthralled the mind, must have been turned into armour to defend and weapons to annoy.

Wherever the heaving and effort of freedom was spread, purification must have followed it. And the types and ancient instruments of error, where emanc.i.p.ated men shewed their foreheads to the day, must have become a language and a ceremony of imagination; expressing, consecrating, and invigorating, the most pure deductions of Reason and the holiest feelings of universal Nature.

When the Boy of Saragossa (as we have been told), too immature in growth and unconfirmed in strength to be admitted by his Fellow-citizens into their ranks, too tender of age for them to bear the sight of him in arms--when this Boy, forgetful or unmindful of the restrictions which had been put upon him, rushed into the field where his Countrymen were engaged in battle, and, fighting with the sinew and courage of an unripe Hero, won a standard from the enemy, and bore his acquisition to the Church, and laid it with his own hands upon the Altar of the Virgin;--surely there was not less to be hoped for his Country from this act, than if the banner, taken from his grasp, had, without any such intermediation, been hung up in the place of wors.h.i.+p--a direct offering to the incorporeal and supreme Being. Surely there is here an object which the most meditative and most elevated minds may contemplate with absolute delight; a well-adapted outlet for the dearest sentiments; an organ by which they may act; a function by which they may be sustained.--Who does not recognise in this presentation a visible affinity with deliverance, with patriotism, with hatred of oppression, and with human means put forth to the height for accomplis.h.i.+ng, under divine countenance, the worthiest ends?

Such is the burst and growth of power and virtue which may rise out of excessive national afflictions from tyranny and oppression;--such is the hallowing influence, and thus mighty is the sway, of the spirit of moral justice in the heart of the individual and over the wide world of humanity. Even the very faith in present miraculous interposition, which is so dire a weakness and cause of weakness in tranquil times when the listless Being turns to it as a cheap and ready subst.i.tute upon every occasion, where the man sleeps, and the Saint, or the image of the Saint, is to perform his work, and to give effect to his wishes;--even this infirm faith, in a state of incitement from extreme pa.s.sion sanctioned by a paramount sense of moral justice; having for its object a power which is no longer sole nor princ.i.p.al, but secondary and ministerial; a power added to a power; a breeze which springs up unthought-of to a.s.sist the strenuous oarsman;--even this faith is subjugated in order to be exalted; and--instead of operating as a temptation to relax or to be remiss, as an encouragement to indolence or cowardice; instead of being a false stay, a necessary and definite dependence which may fail--it pa.s.ses into a habit of obscure and infinite confidence of the mind in its own energies, in the cause from its own sanct.i.ty, and in the ever-present invisible aid or momentary conspicuous approbation of the supreme Disposer of things.

Let the fire, which is never wholly to be extinguished, break out afresh; let but the human creature be rouzed; whether he have lain heedless and torpid in religious or civil slavery--have languished under a thraldom, domestic or foreign, or under both these alternately--or have drifted about a helpless member of a clan of disjointed and feeble barbarians; let him rise and act;--and his domineering imagination, by which from childhood he has been betrayed, and the debasing affections, which it has imposed upon him, will from that moment partic.i.p.ate the dignity of the newly enn.o.bled being whom they will now acknowledge for their master; and will further him in his progress, whatever be the object at which he aims. Still more inevitable and momentous are the results, when the individual knows that the fire, which is reanimated in him, is not less lively in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his a.s.sociates; and sees the signs and testimonies of his own power, incorporated with those of a growing mult.i.tude and not to be distinguished from them, accompany him wherever he moves.--Hence those marvellous achievements which were performed by the first enthusiastic followers of Mohammed; and by other conquerors, who with their armies have swept large portions of the earth like a transitory wind, or have founded new religions or empires.--But, if the object contended for be worthy and truly great (as, in the instance of the Spaniards, we have seen that it is); if cruelties have been committed upon an ancient and venerable people, which 'shake the human frame with horror;' if not alone the life which is sustained by the bread of the mouth, but that--without which there is no life--the life in the soul, has been directly and mortally warred against; if reason has had abominations to endure in her inmost sanctuary;--then does intense pa.s.sion, consecrated by a sudden revelation of justice, give birth to those higher and better wonders which I have described; and exhibit true miracles to the eyes of men, and the n.o.blest which can be seen. It may be added that,--as this union brings back to the right road the faculty of imagination, where it is p.r.o.ne to err, and has gone farthest astray; as it corrects those qualities which (being in their essence indifferent), and cleanses those affections which (not being inherent in the const.i.tution of man, nor necessarily determined to their object) are more immediately dependent upon the imagination, and which may have received from it a thorough taint of dishonour;--so the domestic loves and sanct.i.ties which are in their nature less liable to be stained,--so these, wherever they have flowed with a pure and placid stream, do instantly, under the same influence, put forth their strength as in a flood; and, without being sullied or polluted, pursue--exultingly and with song--a course which leads the contemplative reason to the ocean of eternal love.

I feel that I have been speaking in a strain which it is difficult to harmonize with the petty irritations, the doubts and fears, and the familiar (and therefore frequently undignified) exterior of present and pa.s.sing events. But the theme is justice: and my voice is raised for mankind; for us who are alive, and for all posterity:--justice and pa.s.sion; clear-sighted aspiring justice, and pa.s.sion sacred as vehement.

These, like twin-born Deities delighting in each other's presence, have wrought marvels in the inward mind through the whole region of the Pyrenean Peninsula. I have shewn by what process these united powers sublimated the objects of outward sense in such rites--practices--and ordinances of Religion--as deviate from simplicity and wholesome piety; how they converted them to instruments of n.o.bler use; and raised them to a conformity with things truly divine. The same reasoning might have been carried into the customs of civil life and their accompanying imagery, wherever these also were inconsistent with the dignity of man; and like effects of exaltation and purification have been shewn.

But a more urgent service calls me to point to further works of these united powers, more obvious and obtrusive--works and appearances, such as were hailed by the citizen of Seville when returning from Madrid;--'where' (to use the words of his own public declaration) 'he had left his countrymen groaning in the chains which perfidy had thrown round them, and doomed at every step to the insult of being eyed with the disdain of the conqueror to the conquered; from Madrid threatened, harra.s.sed, and vexed; where mistrust reigned in every heart, and the smallest noise made the citizens tremble in the bosom of their families; where the enemy, from time to time, ran to arms to sustain the impression of terror by which the inhabitants had been stricken through the recent ma.s.sacre; from Madrid a prison, where the gaolers took pleasure in terrifying the prisoners by alarms to keep them quiet; from Madrid thus tortured and troubled by a relentless Tyrant, to fit it for the slow and interminable evils of Slavery;'--when he returned, and was able to compare the oppressed and degraded state of the inhabitants of that metropolis with the n.o.ble att.i.tude of defence in which Andalusia stood. 'A month ago,' says he, 'the Spaniards had lost their country;--Seville has restored it to life more glorious than ever; and those fields, which for so many years have seen no steel but that of the plough-share, are going amid the splendour of arms to prove the new cradle of their adored country.'--'I could not,' he adds, 'refrain from tears of joy on viewing the city in which I first drew breath--and to see it in a situation so glorious!'

We might have trusted, but for late disgraces, that there is not a man in these islands whose heart would not, at such a spectacle, have beat in sympathy with that of this fervent Patriot--whose voice would not be in true accord with his in the prayer (which, if he has not already perished for the service of his dear country, he is perhaps uttering at this moment) that Andalusia and the city of Seville may preserve the n.o.ble att.i.tude in which they then stood, and are yet standing; or, if they be doomed to fall, that their dying efforts may not be unworthy of their first promises; that the evening--the closing hour of their freedom may display a brightness not less splendid, though more aweful, than the dawn; so that the names of Seville and Andalusia may be consecrated among men, and be words of life to endless generations.

Saragossa!--She also has given bond, by her past actions, that she cannot forget her duty and will not shrink from it.[20]

[20] Written in February.

Valencia is under the seal of the same obligation. The mult.i.tudes of men who were arrayed in the fields of Baylen, and upon the mountains of the North; the peasants of Asturias, and the students of Salamanca; and many a solitary and untold-of hand, which, quitting for a moment the plough or the spade, has discharged a more pressing debt to the country by levelling with the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;--these have attested the efficacy of the pa.s.sions which we have been contemplating--that the will of good men is not a vain impulse, heroic desires a delusive prop;--have proved that the condition of human affairs is not so forlorn and desperate, but that there are golden opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated in the outward act;--for a visible standard to look back upon; for a point of realized excellence at which to aspire; a monument to record;--for a charter to fasten down; and, as far as it is possible, to preserve.

Yes! there was an annunciation which the good received with gladness; a bright appearance which emboldened the wise to say--We trust that Regeneration is at hand; these are works of recovered innocence and wisdom:

Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo; _Jam_ redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; _Jam_ nova progenies coelo demitt.i.tur alto.

The spirits of the generous, of the brave, of the meditative, of the youthful and undefiled--who, upon the strongest wing of human nature, have accompanied me in this journey into a fair region--must descend: and, sorrowful to think! it is at the name and remembrance of Britain that we are to stoop from the balmy air of this pure element. Our country did not create, but there was created for her, one of those golden opportunities over which we have been rejoicing: an invitation was offered--a summons sent to her ear, as if from heaven, to go forth also and exhibit on her part, in entire coincidence and perfect harmony, the beneficent action with the benevolent will; to advance in the career of renovation upon which the Spaniards had so gloriously entered; and to solemnize yet another marriage between Victory and Justice. How she acquitted herself of this duty, we have already seen and lamented: yet on this--and on this duty only--ought the mind of that army and of the government to have been fixed. Every thing was smoothed before their feet;--Providence, it might almost be said, held forth to the men of authority in this country a gracious temptation to deceive them into the path of the new virtues which were stirring;--the enemy was delivered over to them; and they were unable to close their infantine fingers upon the gift.--The helplessness of infancy was their's--oh! could I but add, the innocence of infancy!

Reflect upon what was the temper and condition of the Southern Peninsula of Europe--the n.o.ble temper of the people of this mighty island sovereigns of the all-embracing ocean; think also of the condition of so vast a region in the Western, continent and its islands; and we shall have cause to fear that ages may pa.s.s away before a conjunction of things, so marvellously adapted to ensure prosperity to virtue, shall present itself again. It could scarcely be spoken of as being to the wishes of men,--it was so far beyond their hopes.--The government which had been exercised under the name of the old Monarchy of Spain--this government, imbecile even to dotage, whose very selfishness was dest.i.tute of vigour, had been removed; taken laboriously and foolishly by the plotting Corsican to his own bosom; in order that the world might see, more triumphantly set forth than since the beginning of things had ever been seen before, to what degree a man of bad principles is despicable--though of great power--working blindly against his own purposes. It was a high satisfaction to behold demonstrated, in this manner, to what a narrow domain of knowledge the intellect of a Tyrant must be confined; that if the gate by which wisdom enters has never been opened, that of policy will surely find moments when it will shut itself against its pretended master imperiously and obstinately. To the eyes of the very peasant in the field, this sublime truth was laid open--not only that a Tyrant's domain of knowledge is narrow, but melancholy as narrow; inasmuch as--from all that is lovely, dignified, or exhilarating in the prospect of human nature--he is inexorably cut off; and therefore he is inwardly helpless and forlorn.

Was not their hope in this--twofold hope; from the weakness of him who had thus counteracted himself; and a hope, still more cheering, from the strength of those who had been disburthened of a cleaving curse by an ordinance of Providence--employing their most wilful and determined enemy to perform for them the best service which man could perform? The work of liberation was virtually accomplished--we might almost say, established. The interests of the people were taken from a government whose sole aim it had been to prop up the last remains of its own decrepitude by betraying those whom it was its duty to protect;--withdrawn from such hands, to be committed to those of the people; at a time when the double affliction which Spain had endured, and the return of affliction with which she was threatened, made it impossible that the emanc.i.p.ated Nation could abuse its new-born strength to any substantial injury to itself.--Infinitely less favourable to all good ends was the condition of the French people when, a few years past, a Revolution made them, for a season, their own masters,--rid them from the inc.u.mbrance of superannuated inst.i.tutions--the galling pressure of so many unjust laws--and the tyranny of bad customs. The Spaniards became their own masters: and the blessing lay in this, that they became so at once: there had not been time for them to court their power: their fancies had not been fed to wantonness by ever-changing temptations: obstinacy in them would not have leagued itself with trivial opinions: petty hatreds had not acc.u.mulated to ma.s.ses of strength conflicting perniciously with each other: vanity with them had not found leisure to flourish--nor presumption: they did not a.s.sume their authority,--it was given them,--it was thrust upon them. The perfidy and tyranny of Napoleon '_compelled_,' says the Junta of Seville in words before quoted, 'the whole Nation to take up arms and _to choose itself a form of government_; and, in the difficulties and dangers into which the French had plunged it, all--or nearly all--the provinces, as it were _by the inspiration of Heaven_ and _in a manner little short of miraculous_, created Supreme Juntas--delivered themselves up to their guidance--and placed in their hands the rights and the ultimate fate of Spain.'--Governments, thus newly issued from the people, could not but act from the spirit of the people--be organs of their life. And, though misery (by which I mean pain of mind not without some consciousness of guilt) naturally disorders the understanding and perverts the moral sense,--calamity (that is suffering, individual or national, when it has been inflicted by one to whom no injury has been done or provocation given) ever brings wisdom along with it; and, whatever outward agitation it may cause, does inwardly rectify the will.

But more was required; not merely judicious desires; not alone an eye from which the scales had dropped off--which could see widely and clearly; but a mighty hand was wanting. The government had been formed; and it could not but recollect that the condition of Spain did not exact from her children, as a _first_ requisite, virtues like those due and familiar impulses of Spring-time by which things are revived and carried forward in accustomed health according to established order--not power so much for a renewal as for a birth--labour by throes and violence;--a chaos was to be conquered--a work of creation begun and consummated;--and afterwards the seasons were to advance, and continue their gracious revolutions. The powers, which were needful for the people to enter upon and a.s.sist in this work, had been given; we have seen that they had been bountifully conferred. The Nation had been thrown into--rather, lifted up to--that state when conscience, for the body of the people, is not merely an infallible monitor (which may be heard and disregarded); but, by combining--with the attributes of insight to perceive, and of inevitable presence to admonish and enjoin--the attribute of pa.s.sion to enforce, it was truly an all-powerful deity in the soul.

Oh! let but any man, who has a care for the progressive happiness of the species, peruse merely that epitome of Spanish wisdom and benevolence and 'amplitude of mind for highest deeds' which, in the former part of this investigation, I have laid before the reader: let him listen to the reports--which they, who really have had means of knowledge, and who are worthy to speak upon the subject, will give to him--of the things done or endured in every corner of Spain; and he will see what emanc.i.p.ation had there been effected in the mind;--how far the perceptions--the impulses--and the actions also--had outstripped the habit and the character, and consequently were in a process of permanently elevating both; and how much farther (alas! by infinite degrees) the principles and practice of a people, with great objects before them to concentrate their love and their hatred, transcend the principles and practice of governments; not excepting those which, in their const.i.tution and ordinary conduct, furnish the least matter for complaint.