owe to themselves, to their country, and to human nature.  Let any one read the evidence given before that Court, and he will there see, how much the intellectual and moral constitution of many of our military officers, has suffered by a profession, which, if not counteracted by admonitions willingly listened to, and by habits of meditation, does, more than any other, denaturalize—­and therefore degrade the human being;—­he will note with sorrow, how faint are their sympathies with the best feelings, and how dim their apprehension of some of the most awful truths, relating to the happiness and dignity of man in society.  But on this I do not mean to insist at present; it is too weighty a subject to be treated incidentally:  and my purpose is—­not to invalidate the authority of military men, positively considered, upon a military question, but comparatively;—­to maintain that there are military transactions upon which the people have a right to be heard, and upon which their authority is entitled to far more respect than any man or number of men can lay claim to, who speak merely with the ordinary professional views of soldiership;—­that there are such military transactions;—­and that this is one of them.

The condemnation, which the people of these islands pronounced upon the Convention of Cintra considered as to its main military results, that is, as a treaty by which it was established that the Russian fleet should be surrendered on the terms specified; and by which, not only the obligation of forcing the French army to an unconditional surrender was abandoned, but its restoration in freedom and triumph to its own country was secured;—­the condemnation, pronounced by the people upon a treaty, by virtue of which these things were to be done, I have recorded—­accounted for—­and thereby justified.—­I will now proceed to another division of the subject, on which I feel a still more earnest wish to speak; because, though in itself of the highest importance, it has been comparatively neglected;—­mean the political injustice and moral depravity which are stamped upon the front of this agreement, and pervade every regulation which it contains.  I shall shew that our Generals (and with them our Ministers, as far as they might have either given directions to this effect, or have countenanced what has been done)—­when it was their paramount duty to maintain at all hazards the noblest principles in unsuspected integrity; because, upon the summons of these, and in defence of them, their Allies had risen, and by these alone could stand—­not only did not perform this duty, but descended as far below the level of ordinary principles as they ought to have mounted above it;—­imitating not the majesty of the oak with which it lifts its branches towards the heavens, but the vigour with which, in the language of the poet, it strikes its roots downwards towards hell:—­

    Radice in Tartara tendit.