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 emancipation 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 constitution and ordinary conduct, furnish the least matter for complaint.

Then it was—­when the people of Spain were thus rouzed; after this manner released from the natal burthen of that government which had bowed them to the ground; in the free use of their understandings, and in the play and ‘noble rage’ of their passions; while yet the new authorities, which they had generated, were truly living members of their body, and (as I have said) organs of their life:  when that numerous people were in a stage of their journey which could not be accomplished without the spirit which was then prevalent in them, and which (as might be feared) would too soon abate of itself;—­then it was that we—­not we, but the heads of the British army and Nation—­when, if they could not breathe a favouring breath, they ought at least to have stood at an awful distance—­stepped in with their forms, their impediments, their rotten customs and precedents, their narrow desires, their busy and purblind fears; and called out to these aspiring travellers to halt—­’For ye are in a dream;’ confounded them (for it was the voice of a seeming friend that spoke); and spell-bound them, as far as was possible, by an instrument framed ‘in the eclipse’ and sealed ’with curses dark.’—­In a word, we had the power to act up to the most sacred letter of justice—­and this at a time when the mandates of justice were of an affecting obligation such as had never before been witnessed; and we plunged into the lowest depths of injustice:—­We had power to give a brotherly aid to our Allies in supporting the mighty world which their shoulders had undertaken to uphold; and, while they were expecting from us this aid, we undermined—­without forewarning them—­the ground upon which they stood.  The evil is incalculable; and the stain will cleave to the British name as long as the story of this island shall endure.