J827/J Movements in Portugal. 235 



totally failed them, They could hardly escape a conviction with the 

 immediate example of the fact before their eyes that a population used 

 always to submit, would want to feel the weight of an invader's hand, 

 before it understood the advantage of resisting him. They found that the 

 means of defence could not he organized, or the execution of orders relied 

 on, where all the relations of government were fraudulent or weak : and 

 that the power which was sufficient to tyrannize over a citizen, might be 

 contemptibly inadequate to protect him. They saw that prayers and 

 masses might be said and sung, and images exhibited, and miracles per- 

 formed, in vain, when the hour for trial and execution approached. They 

 saw their " Catholic" churches plundered and burned by " Catholic" 

 troops : the sanctity of a saint even in the eyes of " believers" no proof 

 against the value o*f his weight in silver. They saw themselves conquered 

 and enslaved by " true believers," who treated all belief with infamous 

 and blasphemous derision ; and saved and protected by " Heretics," who 

 viewed their belief with respect, although they held it in pity or indifference. 

 They saw all that were not besotted to very stone-blindness that 

 Popery except when used against its worshippers was not the mighty 

 engine which they had taken it to be. That spiritual thunders had no 

 power against fleshly bayonets. That their " vicar on earth" he who 

 could " keep the keys of heaven" wanted the keys of his own dungeons, 

 and was the prisoner of a tyrant and an infidel. They found that Faith 

 was no bond of union as to worldly interests : Heretics were striking on 

 their side, and Catholics against them. Catholics and Protestants fought, 

 man by man, in the ranks of their enemies ; and differed upon no point, 

 but as to which should shed the most of their blood, or gather the most of 

 their property. Catholic and Protestant fought side by side in the ranks of 

 their allies, firmly united in the purpose of defending them. They saw their 

 churches broken and plundered; and yet the curse of the priest did not 

 kill the sacrilegious robbers. They saw convents burst and fired, and their 

 inhabitants driven forth ; and yet the Abbot's malediction passed away 

 powerless. They saw, in short, that those who would attain the human 

 " end," must use the human "means:" that when the wolf threatened 

 the sheep-fold, it was the shepherd's dogs, and not his prayers, that must 

 keep the flock. They found their whole scheme of array, religious and 

 political, broken in an instant laughed at, scattered, and disgraced : a 

 system opposed to it at all useful and practical points, mowing them down 

 without remorse as without difficulty ; and a system that they held still 

 more abominable, a system at once practical and " heretical" their only 

 hope for safety and for restoration. 



Of course all these truths would not be perceived in their full extent at 

 once. Even with time, they would not be seen by all men ; and by many 

 who saw them very clearly, they would still be strenuously denied. The 

 first impulse of the people of Portugal of any people restored to liberty- 

 after such a struggle would be to rush back with the force of a river 

 rushing to its level into all the tastes, habits, and prejudices whatever 

 they might be from which, for the time, they had been driven. Not 

 a hallucination but would be sacred, if it only was exclusively " Portu- 

 guese." Not an abuse but would be ten times more dear by the persecu- 

 tion that it had suffered. Our enemies had scoffed at, and insulted our 

 usages. Our allies had treated them with forbearance, but not always 

 with perfectly disguised contempt. When once a people so excited felt 

 that they held their homes and their country again in their own hands- 

 when once more they could find some object before their eyes other than 



2H2 



