ide, no attempt is made at a distinction;
and, on the side of the French, the word _immoveable_ is manifestly
intended to preclude such a distinction, where alone it could have been
effectual. Property, then, here means--possessions thus infamously
acquired; and, in the instance of the Portugueze, the fundamental notion
of the word is subverted; for a traitor can have no property, till the
government of his own country has remitted the punishment due to his
crimes. And these wages of guilt, which the master by such exactions was
enabled to pay, and which the servant thus earned, are to be guaranteed
to him by a British _army_! Where does there exist a power on earth that
could confer this right? If the Portugueze government itself had acted
in this manner, it would have been guilty of wilful suicide; and the
nation, if it had acted so, of high treason against itself. Let it not,
then, be said, that the monstrousness of covenanting to convey, along
with the persons of the French, their plunder, secures the article from
the interpretation which the people of Great Britain gave, and which, I
have now proved, they were bound to give to it.--But, conceding for a
moment, that it was not intended that the words should bear this sense,
and that, neither in a fair grammatical construction, nor as illustrated
by other passages or by the general tenour of the document, they
actually did bear it, had not unquestionable voices proclaimed the
cruelty and rapacity--the acts of sacrilege, assassination, and robbery,
by which these treasures had been amassed? Was not the perfidy of the
French army, and its contempt of moral obligation, both as a body and as
to the individuals which composed it, infamous through
Europe?--Therefore, the concession would signify nothing: for our
Generals, by allowing an army of this character to depart with its
equipments, waggons, military chest, and baggage, had provided abundant
means to enable it to carry off whatsoever it desired, and thus to elude
and frustrate any stipulations which might have been made for compelling
it to restore that which had been so iniquitously seized. And here are
we brought back to the fountain-head of all this baseness; to that
apathy and deadness to the principle of justice, through the influence
of which, this army, outlawed by its crimes, was suffered to depart from
the Land, over which it had so long tyrannized--other than as a band of
disarmed prisoners.--I maintain, the