Allowing that the ‘regni novitas’ should either compel or tempt the Usurper to do away some ancient abuses, and to accord certain insignificant privileges to the People upon the purlieus of the forest of Freedom (for assuredly he will never suffer them to enter the body of it); allowing this, and much more; that the mass of the Population would be placed in a condition outwardly more thriving—­would be better off (as the phrase in conversation is); it is still true that—­in the act and consciousness of submission to an imposed lord and master, to a will not growing out of themselves, to the edicts of another People their triumphant enemy—­there would be the loss of a sensation within for which nothing external, even though it should come close to the garden and the field—­to the door and the fire-side, can make amends.  The Artisan and the Merchant (men of classes perhaps least attached to their native soil) would not be insensible to this loss; and the Mariner, in his thoughtful mood, would sadden under it upon the wide ocean.  The central or cardinal feeling of these thoughts may, at a future time, furnish fit matter for the genius of some patriotic Spaniard to express in his own noble language—­as an inscription for the Sword of Francis the First; if that Sword, which was so ingloriously and perfidiously surrendered, should ever, by the energies of Liberty, be recovered, and deposited in its ancient habitation in the Escurial.  The Patriot will recollect that,—­if the memorial, then given up by the hand of the Government, had also been abandoned by the heart of the People, and that indignity patiently subscribed to,—­his country would have been lost for ever.

There are multitudes by whom, I know, these sentiments will not be languidly received at this day; and sure I am—­that, a hundred and fifty years ago, they would have been ardently welcomed by all.  But, in many parts of Europe (and especially in our own country), men have been pressing forward, for some time, in a path which has betrayed by its fruitfulness; furnishing them constant employment for picking up things about their feet, when thoughts were perishing in their minds.  While Mechanic Arts, Manufactures, Agriculture, Commerce, and all those products of knowledge which are confined to gross—­definite—­and tangible objects, have, with the aid of Experimental Philosophy, been every day putting on more brilliant colours; the splendour of the Imagination has been fading:  Sensibility, which was formerly a generous nursling of rude Nature, has been chased from its ancient range in the wide domain of patriotism and religion with the weapons of derision by a shadow calling itself Good Sense:  calculations of presumptuous Expediency—­groping its way among partial and temporary consequences—­have been substituted for the dictates of paramount and infallible Conscience, the supreme embracer of consequences:  lifeless and circumspect Decencies have banished the graceful negligence and unsuspicious dignity of Virtue.