by their way of life. Great exertions were made to stop the excesses which at such times are to be expected; but the utmost exertions can do little among troops who believe themselves privileged by the occasion to break loose from the restraints of military discipline, and who are not more fearless of death than they are, while in health and strength, of judgment. The town was sacked: had it been an enemy’s town, it could not have suffered more from its captors. Sentries were placed at all the outlets to make the plunderers lay down their booty, but all that could be secreted about the person was carried off; and the Spaniards of Passages and other places were ready, as at a fair, to purchase the spoils of their countrymen. A reproach was brought upon the British name. The French seized the opportunity of endeavouring to fix upon their enemies the same odious imputation which they themselves were conscious of having deserved; they accused the British of setting fire to the town, indiscriminately murdering friend and foe, and pillaging the place under the eyes of their officers, who made no attempt to restrain them. These charges were brought forward by that party in Spain who, without inclining in ♦SEPTEMBER.♦ the slightest degree toward the French, manifested on all occasions their jealousy and their envious dislike of England; and they added the farther calumny, that the captors had plundered the churches, and, by giving way to excess of every kind, lost the favourable time for following up their success and taking the castle. All was false, except that great excesses had been committed: the difference between the conduct of the British at S. Sebastian’s, and that of the French at Porto, Tarragona, and other places, being this, that the crimes which the former perpetrated were checked as soon as they could be by the officers, acknowledged by the generals as evils which they had not been able to prevent, severely condemned by them, and punished: those of the French had been systematic and predetermined; the men were neither checked nor reproved by their generals; and so far were the generals from receiving any mark of disapprobation from their government, that the acts themselves were ostentatiously proclaimed in bulletins and official reports, in the hope of intimidating the Portugueze and Spaniards, and without any sense of shame. ♦THE GARRISON SURRENDERS.♦