The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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
of the Invader; or, should this not be possible, they would appear in
their true character, and the main danger to be feared from them would
be prevented. The course which ought to be pursued is plain. Either the
cause has lost the people's love, or it has not. If it has, let the
struggle be abandoned. If it has not, let the Government, in whatever
shape it may exist, and however great may be the calamities under which
it may labour, act up to the full stretch of its rights, nor doubt that
the people will support it to the full extent of their power. If,
therefore, the Chiefs of the Spanish Nation be men of wise and strong
minds, they will bring both the forces, those of the Government and of
the people, into their utmost action; tempering them in such a manner
that neither shall impair or obstruct the other, but rather that they
shall strengthen and direct each other for all salutary purposes.
Thirdly, it was never dreamt by any thinking man, that the Spaniards
were to succeed by their army; if by their _army_ be meant any thing but
the people. The whole people is their army, and their true army is the
people, and nothing else. Five hundred men, who in the early part of the
struggle had been taken prisoners,--I think it was at the battle of Rio
Seco--were returned by the French General under the title of Galician
Peasants, a title, which the Spanish General, Blake, rejected and
maintained in his answer that they were genuine soldiers, meaning
regular troops. The conduct of the Frenchman was politic, and that of
the Spaniard would have been more in the spirit of his cause and of his
own noble character, if, waiving on this occasion the plea of any
subordinate and formal commission which these men might have, he had
rested their claim to the title of soldiers on its true ground, and
affirmed that this was no other than the rights of the cause which they
maintained, by which rights every Spaniard was a soldier who could
appear in arms, and was authorized to take that place, in which it was
probable, to those under whom he acted, and on many occasions to
himself, that he could most annoy the enemy. But these patriots of
Galicia were not clothed alike, nor perhaps armed alike, nor had the
outward appearance of those bodies, which are called regular troops; and
the Frenchman availed himself of this pretext, to apply to them that
insolent language, which might, I think, have been more nobly repelled
on a more comprehensive principle. For thus are men of the gravest minds
imposed upon by the presumptuous; and through these influences it comes,
that the strength of a tyrant is in opinion--not merely in the opinion
of those who support him, but alas! even of those who willingly resist,
and who would resist effectually, if it were not that their own
understandings betray them, being already half enslaved by shews and
forms. The whole Spanish nation ought to be encouraged to deem
themselves an army, embodied under the authority of their country and of
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