The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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
feelings of the Portugueze, the general tenour of his bearing towards
them might have been such that they could not look favourably upon him;
that he was not a man framed to conciliate them, to compose their
differences, or to awaken or strengthen their zeal. I allude to the
passage in his letter above quoted, where, having occasion to speak of
the French General, he has found no name by which to designate him but
that of DUC D'ABRANTES--words necessarily implying, that Bonaparte, who
had taken upon himself to confer upon General Junot this Portugueze
title with Portugueze domains to support it, was lawful Sovereign of
that Country, and that consequently the Portugueze Nation were rebels,
and the British Army, and he himself at the head of it, aiders and
abettors of that rebellion. It would be absurd to suppose, that Sir
Arthur Wellesley, at the time when he used these words, was aware of the
meaning really involved in them: let them be deemed an oversight. But
the capability of such an oversight affords too strong suspicion of a
deadness to the moral interests of the cause in which he was engaged,
and of such a want of sympathy with the just feelings of his injured
Ally as could exist only in a mind narrowed by exclusive and overweening
attention to the _military_ character, led astray by vanity, or hardened
by general habits of contemptuousness. These words, 'DUKE OF ABRANTES
_in person_,' were indeed words of bad omen: and thinking men trembled
for the consequences. They saw plainly, that, in the opinion of the
exalted Spaniards--of those assuredly who framed, and of all who had
felt, that affecting Proclamation addressed by the Junta of Seville to
the Portugueze people, he must appear utterly unworthy of the station in
which he had been placed. He had been sent as a deliverer--as an
assertor and avenger of the rights of human nature. But these words
would carry with them every where the conviction, that Portugal and
Spain, yea, all which was good in England, or iniquitous in France or in
Frenchmen, was forgotten, and his head full only of himself, miserably
conceiting that he swelled the importance of his conquered antagonist by
sounding titles and phrases, come from what quarter they might; and
that, in proportion as this was done, he magnified himself and his
achievements. It was plain, then, that here was a man, who, having not
any fellow-feeling with the people whom he had been commissioned to aid,
could not know where their strength lay, and therefore could not turn it
to account, nor by his example call it forth or cherish it; but that, if
his future conduct should be in the same spirit, he must be a blighting
wind wherever his influence was carried: for he had neither felt the
wrongs of his Allies nor been induced by common worldly prudence to
affect to feel them, or at least to disguise his insensibility; and
therefore what could follow, but, in despite of victory and outward
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