May I beg of your Lordship to present my respectful compliments to Lady Lonsdale.

I have the honour to be, my Lord,
Your Lordship’s most obedient servant,
W. WORDSWORTH.[61]

[60] Memoirs, i. 388-90.

[61] Ibid, i. 390-1.

36. Of ‘The Convention of Cintra,’ &c.

LETTER TO SOUTHEY.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,[62]

[62] Mr. Southey’s opinions on the Convention of Cintra, at the time of its ratification, were in unison with those of his friend.  See Southey’s Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 177-180.

Col.  Campbell, our neighbour at G., has sent for your book; he served during the whole of the Peninsular war, and you shall hear what he says of it in due course.  We are out of the way of all literary communication, so I can report nothing.  I have read the whole with great pleasure; the work will do you everlasting honour.  I have said the whole, forgetting, in that contemplation, my feelings upon one part, where you have tickled with a feather when you should have branded with a red-hot iron.  You will guess I mean the Convention of Cintra.  My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event is not at all diminished by your account of it.  Buonaparte had committed a capital blunder in supposing that when he had intimidated the Sovereigns of Europe he had conquered the several Nations.  Yet it was natural for a wiser than he was to have fallen into this mistake; for the old despotisms had deprived the body of the people of all practical knowledge in the management, and, of necessity, of all interest, in the course of affairs.  The French themselves were astonished at the apathy and ignorance of the people whom they had supposed they had utterly subdued, when they had taken their fortresses, scattered their armies, entered their capital cities, and struck their cabinets with dismay.  There was no hope for the deliverance of Europe till the nations had suffered enough to be driven to a passionate recollection of all that was honourable in their past history, and to make appeal to the principles of universal and everlasting justice.  These sentiments, the authors of that Convention most unfeelingly violated; and as to the principles, they seemed to be as little aware even of the existence of such powers, for powers emphatically may they be called, as the tyrant himself.  As far, therefore, as these men could, they put an extinguisher upon the star which was then rising.  It is in vain to say that after the first burst of indignation was over, the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance.  We may infer from that the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them.  Our duty was to have treated them with respect as the representatives of suffering humanity beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise against the tremendous oppression, and to show how, and how only, it could be put an end to.