Whatever may be the character of the Portugueze Nation; be it true or not, that they had a becoming sense of the injuries which they had received from the French Invader, and were rouzed to throw off oppression by a universal effort, and to form a living barrier against it;—­certain it is that, betrayed and trampled upon as they had been, they held unprecedented claims upon humanity to secure them from further outrages.—­Moreover, our conduct towards them was grossly inconsistent.  For we entered their country upon the supposition that they had such sensibility and virtue; we announced to them publickly and solemnly our belief in this:  and indeed to have landed a force in the Peninsula upon any other inducement would have been the excess of folly and madness.  But the Portugueze are a brave people—­a people of great courage and worth!  Conclusions, drawn from intercourse with certain classes 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 illustrious example; and that nothing can abolish their claim upon the good wishes and upon the gratitude 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 nobly; whom their constitution 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 surpassing 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