The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.Wordsworth, William
General
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.
Wordsworth, William
English literature -- 19th century
removed; and the free disposal of the same is restored to the proper
owners.' Which amounts to this. The French are called upon formally to
relinquish, in favour of the Portugueze, that to which they never had
any right; to abandon false claims, which they either had a power to
enforce, or they had not: if they departed immediately and had _not_
power, the article was nugatory; if they remained a day longer and _had_
power, there was no security that they would abide by it. Accordingly,
loud complaints were made that, after the date of the Convention, all
kinds of ravages were committed by the French upon Lisbon and its
neighbourhood: and what did it matter whether these were upon the plea
of old debts and requisitions; or new debts were created more greedily
than ever--from the consciousness that the time for collecting them was
so short? This article, then, the only one which is even in shew
favourable to the Portugueze, is, in substance, nothing: inasmuch as, in
what it is silent upon, (viz. that the People of Lisbon and its
neighbourhood shall not be vexed and oppressed by the French, during
their stay, with new claims and robberies,) it is grossly cruel or
negligent; and, in that for which it actually stipulates, wholly
delusive. It is in fact insulting; for the very admission of a formal
renunciation of these claims does to a certain degree acknowledge their
justice. The only decent manner of introducing matter to this effect
would have been by placing it as a bye clause of a provision that
secured the Portugueze from further molestations, and merely alluding to
it as a thing understood of course. Yet, from the place which this
specious article occupies, (preceding immediately the 16th and 17th
which we have been last considering,) it is clear that it must have been
intended by the French General as honey smeared upon the edge of the
cup--to make the poison, contained in those two, more palateable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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