234 Movemen is in Portuga I. [MARCH 



physique: her people had bolder national and legendary recollections ; 

 they ranged over a wider and more varied tract of country ; her military 

 establishment was not at all points contemptible ; and her peasantry single 

 handed were a fierce, and an indomitable race. In all its relations and 

 positions, Portugal was enfeebled and depressed. Its government was as 

 bigotted as that of Spain ; and, if a little less ignorant, even still more 

 slothful. Its internal regulations and police, were clogged with abuse, to 

 absolute uselessness and stoppage. Its army, a ragged and pauperised 

 rabble, scarcely worthy of the military name. One circumstance alone 

 made the Portuguese available, and in the end highly valuable allies : 

 their ignorance and imbecility were so hopeless and incontestable, that they 

 did not (like the Spaniards) refuse to be guided by those who were wiser 

 and stronger than themselves. In this state however it was of sluggish 

 and shameful unreadiness that the French invasion rushed over Portugal, 

 in all the horrors of a merciless and predatory warfare. Her capital was 

 possessed and plundered by the enemy. Her finest provinces stripped as 

 by common bandits; swept of their population, and wasted even with lire 

 and sword. The foot of a master and of a robber, was upon the neck of 

 every Portuguese. The history of every house became that of shame or 

 mourning : fortunes were ruined ; feelings all the best ties which hold 

 humanity together, outraged and trampled upon. The whole state, in 

 short, of the country both as to interests political and private was dislo- 

 cated, and broken up, and cast again almost into original elements ; and 

 its inhabitants were only rescued from confirmed and permanent bondage, 

 by calling in an army of strangers to their very hearth-stones, and blindly 

 trusting to them for protection and relief. 



A people like ourselves, who stand in the enviable situation of conquer- 

 ing our enemies always at a distance ; and in fact know very little of the 

 operation of a war, more than that it increases the number of Extraordinary 

 Gazettes, and raises the price of soap and candles ; have little conception 

 of such 'a possibility as the meeting an enemy at our own fire-sides far 

 less of what it would be to be vanquished in that last position by one. In 

 three generations, the events of the " French invasion," and of the " Bri- 

 tish occupation," will not be forgotten by the people of Portugal. There 

 will not be a family that, beyond that date will not, by some bitter 

 token, cherish their remembrance. For six years of incessant warfare, the 

 country was exhausted and beggared ; not by *' taxes" levied upon pro- 

 perty, but by the seizure of every property in possession, and by the stop- 

 5 age or destruction of every source from which future property could be 

 erived. A conflict was carrying on within it, wliich the best exertions of 

 those who fought in its aid could not prevent from ruining and devastating 

 almost every acre of its surface. The presence even of our friends became 

 a horror inferior only to that of our enemies ; and the only hope which 

 could sustain us under the trial was, that with the victory of ihefonner, 

 their assistance and our suffering would cease. 



As that must be an " ill breeze," however, according to the adage, 

 " which blows good no where," so a ruin, and bankruptcy so complete as 

 this produced by no hidden or doubtful causes, but by the clear direct ope- 

 ration of strength and knowledge opposed to a system radically weak, and 

 bad- could hardly fail, great as the evil was, to bring with it somo 

 portion of future advantage to Portugal. In spite of the prejudices of 

 habit, and of that pride which is the especial companion everywhere of 

 ignorance, the Portuguese could not help seeing at least this that the 

 system to which they had trusted, and which they believed invincible, had 



