Portugueze entreated our assistance, we had proved to them that we were not wanting in fellow-feeling.  Therefore might we be admitted to be judges between them and their enemies—­unexceptionable judges—­more competent even than a dispassionate posterity, which, from the very want comparatively of interest and passion, might be in its examination remiss and negligent, and therefore in its decision erroneous.  We, their contemporaries, were drawn towards them as suffering beings; but still their sufferings were not ours, nor could be; and we seemed to stand at that due point of distance from which right and wrong might be fairly looked at and seen in their just proportions.  Every thing conspired to prepossess the Spaniards and Portugueze in our favour, and to give the judgment of the British Nation authority in their eyes.  Strange, then, would be their first sensations, when, upon further trial, instead of a growing sympathy, they met with demonstrations of a state of sentiment and opinion abhorrent from their own.  A shock must have followed upon this discovery, a shock to their confidence—­not perhaps at first in us, but in themselves:  for, like all men under the agitation of extreme passion, no doubt they had before experienced occasional misgivings that they were subject to error and distraction from afflictions pressing too violently upon them.  These flying apprehensions would now take a fixed place; and that moment would be most painful.  If they continued to respect our opinion, so far must they have mistrusted themselves:  fatal mistrust at such a crisis!  Their passion of just vengeance, their indignation, their aspiring hopes, everything that elevated and cheared, must have departed from them.  But this bad influence, the excess of the outrage would mitigate or prevent; and we may be assured that they rather recoiled from Allies who had thus by their actions discountenanced and condemned efforts, which the most solemn testimony of conscience had avouched to them were just;—­that they recoiled from us with that loathing and contempt which unexpected, determined, and absolute hostility, upon points of dearest interest will for ever create.

Again:  independence and liberty were the blessings for which the people of the Peninsula were contending—­immediate independence, which was not to be gained but by modes of exertion from which liberty must ensue.  Now, liberty—­healthy, matured, time-honoured liberty—­this is the growth and peculiar boast of Britain; and Nature herself, by encircling with the ocean the country which we inhabit, has proclaimed that this mighty Nation is for ever to be her own ruler, and that the land is set apart for the home of immortal independence.  Judging then from these first fruits of British Friendship, what bewildering and depressing and hollow thoughts must the Spaniards and Portugueze have entertained concerning the real value of these blessings, if the people who have possessed them longest, and who ought to understand them best, could send forth an army capable of enacting the oppression and baseness of the Convention of Cintra; if the government of that people could sanction this treaty; and if, lastly, this distinguished and favoured people themselves could suffer it to be held forth to the eyes of men as expressing the sense of their hearts—­as an image of their understandings.