The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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
opprobrium and ridicule at the same time that they complete their
destruction, they have no other resource but the pity of those they have
wished to assassinate--a pity which they never have implored in vain,
when acknowledging their crime, they have solicited pardon from
Frenchmen, who, incapable of departing from their noble character, are
ever as generous as they are brave.'--By order of Monseigneur le duc
d'AbrantÈs, Commander in chief.'--Compare this with the Address of
Massaredo to the Biscayans, in which there is the like avowal that the
Spaniards are to be treated as Rebels. He tells them, that he is
commanded by his master, Joseph Bonaparte, to assure them--'that, in
case they disapprove of the insurrection in the City of Bilboa, his
majesty will consign to oblivion the mistake and error of the
Insurgents, and that he will punish only the heads and beginners of the
insurrection, with regard to whom _the law must take its course_.'
To be the victim of such bloody-mindedness is a doleful lot for a
Nation; and the anguish must have been rendered still more poignant by
the scoffs and insults, and by that heinous contempt of the most awful
truths, with which the Perpetrator of those cruelties has proclaimed
them.--Merciless ferocity is an evil familiar to our thoughts; but these
combinations of malevolence historians have not yet been called upon to
record; and writers of fiction, if they have ever ventured to create
passions resembling them, have confined, out of reverence for the
acknowledged constitution of human nature, those passions to reprobate
Spirits. Such tyranny is, in the strictest sense, intolerable; not
because it aims at the extinction of life, but of every thing which
gives life its value--of virtue, of reason, of repose in God, or in
truth. With what heart may we suppose that a genuine Spaniard would read
the following impious address from the Deputation, as they were falsely
called, of his apostate countrymen at Bayonne, seduced or compelled to
assemble under the eye of the Tyrant, and speaking as he dictated? 'Dear
Spaniards, Beloved Countrymen!--Your habitations, your cities, your
power, and your property, are as dear to us as ourselves; and we wish to
keep all of you in our eye, that we may be able to establish your
security.--We, as well as yourselves, are bound in allegiance to the old
dynasty--to her, to whom an end has been put by that God-like Providence
which rules all thrones and sceptres. We have seen the greatest states
fall under the guidance of this rule, and our land alone has hitherto
escaped the same fate. An unavoidable destiny has now overtaken our
country, and brought us under the protection of the invincible Emperor
of France.--We know that you will regard our present situation with the
utmost consideration; and we have accordingly, in this conviction, been
uniformly conciliating the friendship to which we are tied by so many
obligations. With what admiration must we see the benevolence and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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