Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER.

FOL. XIV. No. 14.] LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1808. [PRICE 10D.

13]

SUMMARY OF POLITICS CONVENTION IN PORTUGAL.- When his is the subject of discussion, or remark, I an take no motto; for I have endeavoured, vain, to recollect a transaction, feigned or cal, of so detestable a character History

phes us with nothing like it ; nor has the pagination of the port, as far as I am acpainted with poetical works, yet invented el of acts and circumstances bearing any semblance to those connected with this ocious Convention The public have , and do feel, properly upon the subet. Indignation so universal was cerInly never expressed upon any former casion within the memory of man. The untry people, who are, in general, very ow in moving, and amongst whom there are it few political events that are capable of citing an interest sufficient to prodce a Irmth of expression, have been completeToused by this event; and, even down to every labourers, they vent their execraons upon the heads of the miserable au

It is right that the ill-treated, the rayed, the sacrificed, Portuguese and vedish nations should know, that such is e feeling of the people of England; that many places, the bells of the churches ve been rung muffled, as upon occasions public mourning; that many of the pubprints have assumed the signs of mouin; and that every public paper in London, e excepted, and that one the property of ompany of persons chiefly East Indians, reprobated, in the most decided manner, in a language evidently coming from the art, all the articles of the Conventions, especially those articles which contain palations injurious to the interests and the nour of our allies. There is a paragraph the Courier newspaper of yesterday, ich I cannot refrain from putting upon ord, as amongst the means, which may, hope, in time, wipe away this national any." In this period of general bumiliation and disgrace, the provincial papers vie with those of the metropolis in the expression of their surprize, their sorrow, and their indignation. Many that we have received have encircled the Extraordinary Gazette with a broad black line. One has prefixed to it several galowser, with bodies hanging to them.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

[514

"Some cannot find words strong enough to express their rage: others burst forth into, such a strain as this: "Oh. England! unhappy England! all thy struggles aro "vain! Thou mayest assemble thy courts"martial, but, it is all in vain! Some power, more than human, smites thy com "manders with blindness, as, at the prayer "of Elisha, God smote the Syrians. "thou incomprehensible Being! in whose "hands are the destinies of empires, if "thou hast doomed this kingdom to sink "beneath the overwhelming power of

Oh,

France, yet let not the wisdom of her sages, "the piety of her saints, the blood of her "heroes and her martyrs, plead with thee "in vain. Let her not fall the victim of "baseness! but if she must sink for ever "into the ocean of time, suffer a solitary "ray of glory to mark the spot where

[ocr errors]

once was England!"-Let Europe and the "world judge from these specimens how "deeply the whole empire feels and mourns "its irretrievable disgrace."Yes, I hope, that Lurope and the world will acquit the people of England, at any rate, of any share in this unparalleled infamy. They hesitated not, one moment, to express their indignation; it came forth, at once, from every mouth; and the press has been the faithful reporter and recorder of what was uttered by the tongue. The people of England and the people of Portugal have both alike been injured; they have both been abused; they have bou. Seen insulted: but, the former have it in their power to cause justice to be done upon their injurers, a power which the latter have not. To shew, therefore, that we are in earnest; to convince " Europe and the world," that our indignation is not feigned; to prove our sincerity, we ought, from all parts of the kingdom, to address the king, or to petition him, and, in our addres-es or petitions, to implore him to take measures for speedily bringing to trial all those, who may have taken a share in the hated transactions in Portugal. This was the mode formerly pursued by Englishmen, under similar circumstances; this all the world knows we may do if we will; and, if we have not the will to do it; if ve have not the spirit to move one inch in the way of practice, the world will give us very little credit for all our fine professions. The

R

i

plain state of the case is this: we all say, that our commanders have affixed lasting disgrace upon our country, and have most basely injured and insulted our allies, whereat we express our sorrow and our indignation in words almost too big for utterance; our right to petition the king to cause those commanders to be brought to trial is notorious; and, if we do not exercise that right, upon this occasion, the world will, and ought to, look upon us, not only as hypocrites, but as accessories, after the fact, to the deed which we have cursed, in every form of words in which a curse can be conveyed.In the City of London, I perceive, that that very public spirited and excellent man, Mr. Waithman, has given notice of his intention of moving, at the next Common Council, an address to the king, upon the subject. The City of London may, perhaps, give the tone to other places; but, I must confess, that the coun try appears to me to be very tardy in this respect; much more so than it was in addressing the king, in the tone of congratulation and applause, upon what, amongst other things, this same famous army of ours was intended to do. For my part, resolved that no portion of the disgrace," however small, shall adhere to me, I, as a freeholder of Hampshire, hereby invite other freeholders to join me in a requisition to the High Sheriff of the county, to call a county meeting, for the above purpose. I request any freeholders, who may be disposed to join me, to signify such their disposition by letter, directed to me, at Botley, near Southampton. I will go to any part of the county to concert with any five or six other freeholders, if no greater number should offer: or I will do any thing in my power to effect the object in view. I shall be much better pleased to see the thing originats elsewhere, and with leading men in the county; but, if no one at all join me, and if no requisition be made from any other quarter, previous to the fifteenth of October, I myself will then make the requisition; and, if a meeting be not thereby obtained, I will then present, in my own name, and in my own person, if possible, a petition to the king for the purpose above-mentioned. Let the infamy fasten where it will, none of it shall stick to me.Will any one tell me, that, in these military matters, the Crown is to be left to itself; and will any sycophant pretend, that, to interfere in such matters is to encroach upon the royal prerogative? Without resorting to reasoning, or to any of the numerous precedents that might be cited, we know this; all of us have this

fact clear in our memories, that it is more than two months, since almost all the counties, cities, and boroughs in the kingdom, did actually address the king upon the subject of the military measures he was adopting with regard to Spain and Portugal; they thanked him for his speech, wherein he expressed his intention of aiding the Spaniards and Portuguese; and this, observe, was done with the approbation, and at the notorious instigation, of the ministers of the king. And, shall we not, now that this promised and applauded aid, this aid, for the intention of yielding which the king was thanked; now that this aid bas by what we all deem the misconduct of ou commanders, been rendered abortive, alte costing the nation sums so immense; shall w not now approach the king with our prayer that he would cause legal and public inquin to be instituted in order to ascertain to what if to any, degree those commanders an guilty? This we have a right to do; reaso bids us exercise the right; no man, of eve the most slavish principles has ever calle the right in question; and, if we do no exercise it, in vain shall we have used high sounding words of sorrow and of rage; la by the common sense of mankind, we sha be set down as pretenders and hypocrites.

What I have now said, is what I sho have said in my last sheet, if I had time. And, if it would have been pro then; if the active, the decided, the pr tical condemnation of the late Convent in Portugal, would have been necessary the restoration of the national charact under the knowledge then possessed by t public, how much more imperious is call upon us become, now that we are quainted with facts, of which we were b fore ignorant, and which render the tran action beyond all comparison more disgrac ful to our country and more injurious our allies than it before appeared to though it then appeared to be too b admit of reprobation commensurate w its demerits?It appears, from a p lication in the newspapers just receiv that the Portuguese Enibassador in Lon has received dispatches from the Regenc Portugal, commanding him to msh strong remonstrance against the Con tions; that the people of Portugal were less indignant at the terms of these Conv tions than the people of England are; that any Portuguese of any description were sulted upon the subject of the Come tions; and that, so great was the disa faction in Portugal, that apprehens were entertained, that, if our gener

of

Chronicle has remarked, that it must have proceeded from insanity, and that, if verined, the authors ought to be brought home, bled, blistered, and put into dark cells. This is one way of avenging ourselves on them for their mischievous arrogance, ther insolent presumption; but, I am not for any thing bearing the resemblance of a jes', upon a subject so serious, so replete with matter of national grief, shame and dis grace. What! Admitted as auxiliaries received as assistants in the work of delive rance; lending under professions of disinte restedness and generosity, we not only make a convention without the advice, with out the consent, withont the knowledge, of the regency or of the commander of the Portuguese forces or of any Portuguese in authority; but, having so done, we, in virtue of that convention, hoist our Bags upon the ramports of Portugal, with as little regard for the feelings of either the people or their sovereign, as if we had been in the country of the Tanjoreans or the Polygars. And, then to draw down the flags by the way compulsion. First to raise the emblem of valoar for the purpose of base insolence, and then to lower it from motives of fear! Verily, if this be forgiven, the ass of Isacher greatly yields to us in the virtue of patience. Why, the flees, used upon this occasion, ought, if the fact be true, to be burnt by the hands of the hangman, or put to uses the most vile that the imagination can invent.-17, however, the previous facts be true, for which I do not, as yet, take upon me to vonch; if it be true, that the arms were refused, that the patriots were studiously kept in the back ground, that their merits have passed unnoticed, and that a day's bread was refused them in the hour previous to the action; if these facts be true, the hoisting of our flag over their heads is no more than a suitable winding up of the climax of insolent contempt; and the whole series, as well as the concluding act, prove, that, from the outset, it was resolved to treat the Portuguese after the manner, in which we have treated the miserable sovereigns and slaves of the Indian peninsula.

attempted to suffer the French to carry off their plunde, open and violent opposition would be made by the Portuguese. But, there are other alledged facts of a still more serious nature, which facts I find stated in the Times newspaper of the 26th September, and which, if they shall prove to be well founded, cannot possibly leave a doubt in the mind of any man living, as to the motive, by which Wellesley, at least, was actuated. The facts, as thus given, are, 1. that Wellesley, when he first landed, upon being applied to for the arms, sent out for the use of the Portuguese patriots, refused them, in consequence of which refusal more than three fourths of the patriots were prevented from taking part in the action against the French; 2. that, even those patriots who were armed, were not brought into action, but, on the contrary, in one case a body of 1,500 of them were put aside to make way for a corps of British, and, in another case, during the battle of Vimiera, the whole of the patriot force, under their general FREIRE, was removed to the distance of more than six miles from the scene of action; 3. that no merit has been, by our general, ascribed to any of the individual exertions of the patriots, but, on the contrary, that, in some instances, the merit, due to them, has been given to the English soldiers; 4. that, at the battles so much talked of, there were 18,000 English to 12,000 French troops, and that, while the Portuguese think that victory in such a case was no subject for boasting, they deny, that, the Convention taken into consideration, any conquest was achieved; 5. that, just before the last engagement, the patriots having consumed all the bread they had in their train, their general applied to Wellesley for a single day's bread, but that this application was rejected, though the army. of the latter had a great abundance, upou which rejection the Portuguese general shortly observed: "then we will fight with"out bread;" 6. that, as soon as the Convention had placed the forts and capital in our hands, our precious commanders hoisted the British flag in them, as if we had been the principals in the war, nay, as if we had been the re-captors of the country, and the Portuguese people had been consigned over to new masters, and that this trait of insolence had excited such loud and general expressions of indignation, that our banners were, as it were by compulsion, taken down soon after they were raised Upon this last-mentioued fact, this most of all cutting indignity upon the Portuguese nation and their sovereign, the Morning

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

"

[ocr errors]

:

may be hostile in it to the sovereign au"thority and independence of this govern"ment, and for all that may be against the honour, safety, and interests of the na"tion and, in particular, I protest against "what is stipulated in the following atti"cles : ARTICLES I, IV, and XII, "Because these articles determine the sur"render of Portuguese fortified places, stores, and ships to the English forces, "without solemnly declaring that this sur"render is momentary, and that it is in"tended they should be immediately re"stored to the Prince Regent of Portugal,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

or the government that may represent

him, to whom they belong, and in whose "aid the English forces came as auxilia"ries!ART. XVI. Because it permits "the residence in Portugal of the indivi"duals mentioned in it.ART. XVII. "Because it attempts to tie down the go"vernment of this kingdom, not to bring "to justice and condign punishment those

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

persons who have been notoriously and

scandalously disloyal to their prince and "their country, by joining and serving the "French party: and, even if the protec"tion of the English army should be al"lowed to screen them from the punish"ment they have deserved, still it should "not prevent their expulsion, whereby "this country would no longer have to "fear being again betrayed by the same 66 men. -FIRST OF THE ADDITIONAL "ARTICLES. This article can by no means "bind the government of this kingdom, as

"

no reciprocal conditions are stipulated. "I protest finally, on account of the "want of attention to the safety of the "inhabitants of the capital and its envi

65

rons, nothing having been stipulated in "their favour to insure their not being "still vexed and oppressed by the French

[ocr errors]

during their stay-not even an equi"valent for what is established by Art. "XVI and XVII, in favour of the French " and their followers. And to these "heads I limit my protest, in order not "to make too long a list, passing over other

[ocr errors]

objects of less importance, such as the "concession of 800 horses, which was "made without considering that they al"most all belong to Portugal, and thus can"not be considered as property of the "French; that of the magazines of the

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

:

1808."--Now, before we make any remark upon this protest, which, of itself, proves how worthy this general was of being consulted, and of having great deference paid to his opinions and his wishes, I beg leave to recall to the mind of the reader a fact, which he may have forgotten, but which is of great importance as viewed in connection with the facts now come to light. It is this that, some days after the news of the battle of Vimeira arrived, a report prevailed, that a convention had been made with Junot by the Portuguese Regency and Commanders, which convention was described to be nearly what the real convention has turned out to be. This report was stated in all the English newspapers; and, in their comments upon it, they expressed their hopes, that our commanders would not consent to its execution. They called it "a French trick;" they expatiated on its invalidity; and they threw out hints not very complimentary to either the sense, the courage, or the integrity of the Portuguese Regency and Commanders. Well, then, this supposed act of theirs, is the real act of our commanders. Good God! where, if these men are not brought to trial, and that speedily, shall we hide our heads ?—————The protest speaks for itself. It would be useless to go over it in detail; but, there is one thing, of which, from the bare perusal of this paper, the public must, at once, imbibe perfect conviction, and that is, that it is impossible, that there can be any harmony between our generals, our Convention-making Commanders, and the Commanders of the Portuguese forces; and that, if Portugal were again to be attacked by the French, the defence of it, by the forces and the commanders now there, would be 3 thing not within the compass of probability. Nay; it is not at all improbable, that what has here been supposed may be the least of the mischiefs to be apprehended. It is hardly possible, that, in the necessarily exasperated state of the public mind in Portugal; in that state of mind described to us in pretty authentic intelligence; it is, in such a state of the public mind, hardly possible, that our army should be suffered to remain there, under their present commanders, in security from insult, to say nothing of the danger of actual assault. This being the case, it is matter of some surprize with me, that the ministers have not taken the earliest opportunity of apprizing the public, that they have recalled the makers of the Convention; for, that they have not done it would be shocking to suppose, Yet, when I think of the partial publication in the Official Gazette; when I

hink of the leaving out of the translation of the armistice; and when I observe, that not a word is said, in any of the ministerial papers, about recalling the generals, I must confess, that I have my fears of some inention being resorted to for the purpose of creening them. That Wellesley cannot be creened alone is evident. He must take his ate with Dalrymple; nay, my opinion is, that the last-named old gentleman will be ble to produce convincing proof, that he was a mere tool in the hands of Wellesley. If this be the case, the very bottom of the ink of corruption will be stirred up, in order to bring them all off clear. The first hing to be thought of, however, is the state of things in Portugal, where there can be neither peace nor safety as long as the conention-making generals remain there; and, et it be observed, that, though our minis lers might not be able to prevent the conJusion of the Convention, they will be anwerable for whatever mischief may arise rom our Convention-making generals remaining in possession of the command beFond the earliest moment, at which they had it in their power to deprive them of it, after they received the accounts of the shameful transactions, of which we have been speaking. Let them, therefore, look to this. If they persist in keeping such men in the command, they ought to be, and they will be, objects of general execration.There are, doubtless, many exaggerated reports; but, it is by no means incredible, that the Portuguese army may, as has been stated in some of the public prints, "have taken a menacing position, and "have distinctly intimated to Sir H. Dal"rymple, that they will resist the fulfilment "of the Convention; nay, more, that they "will consider any movement of the Eng"lish army, with a view to facilitate the "embarkation of the French force, as an "hostile act." If this be so, I wonder how the old gentleman felt at the intimation? I se nothing dishonourable, nor at all unfair, in the Portuguese doing this. They were no parties to the Convention. They never were consulted upon the subject. They had invested our generals with no diplomatic powers. They had never put the country under their command. They never recognized them either as rulers or representatives. Suppose, for instance, the Convention had contained an article recognizing the kingiy authority in Junot. Is there any man upon earth, who will contend, that the Portuguese would have been bound to acknowledge him as their lawful sovereign? No: it is clear, then, that our generals could not bind them

in any thing; that they could stipulate legally for nothing which they had not, ont of their own means, and without contravening the rights or the wishes of the Portuguese, the power of fulfilling. Why, good God! suppose they had stipulated to give England to Napoleon, Wellesley's recognized "Em

peror and king ;" must we have suffered him to come and take it? The idea is too absurd to be entertained for a moment; yet they had just as much right to give away England as they had to give away Portuguese property.They must, if the Portuguese resist the fulfilment of their base Convention, be in a fine stew, as the old women call it. I dare say, Sir Hewy would give his mull and his boots into the bargain, had he never quitted Gibraltar; and our dashing "Che

valier du bain" would part with a trifle, had he remained amongst the tawny slaves of Hindostan, where men are mowed down like wheat-ears. Should this resistance (which God send!) take place, how the haughty Wellesley must be amazed! He will not be able to treat the Portuguese after the manner of treating the poor souls in India. How disconcerted he must look! I think I see him now. What! the people whom he did not deem worthy of partaking in the glory of his battles, forbid him to execute his Convention!

We have now, amongst the other docu. ments that have come to hand, a letter from Wellesley to the Bishop of Oporto, which letter, when the reader bas seen it, will convince him of the truth of all I said, in my last, respecting the participation of Wellesley in the transactions of the 22d of Au◄ gust It is dated at the camp of Ramahal, on the 24th of August, and its contents are as follows: -- May it please your Excellency I have the honour to inform

[ocr errors]

66

your excellency, that the army under my "command defeated general Laborde's di"vision on the 17th instant, and, on the 21st

instant, the whole of the French army unit"ed, under the command of General Junot, "at Vimiera. The loss of the enemy in "those actions was very considerable. Last "night he sent general Kellermann to confer "with General Sir H. Dalrymple, who con"cluded an agreement with the said General "for a suspension of hostilities, until the con"clusion of a Convention for the total evacua"tion of Portugal by the French troops This

[ocr errors]

agreement contains nothing remarkable, "with the exception of a provision for securing the neutrality of the port of Lisbon and "the Russian squadron. Permit me to congra "tulate your excellency on the approaching "conclusion of the misfortunes which have

« AnteriorContinuar »