o Latin nations would
overwhelm this "province of England," and together they would chase the
British from the Mediterranean. That Portugal had loyally supported
Spain in the monarchist cause mattered little. In place of the costly
war of principle, Godoy sought to substitute an effort with limited
liability, effective partnership, and enormous profits. He knew not that
in entering on this broad and easy path, he assured the ruin of Spain
and the ultimate loss of her colonial empire.

In this secret chaffering Pitt and Grenville were worsted as inevitably
as in the similar case of the Partition of Poland. The Power that cries
"hands off" to abettors of robbery needs to have overwhelming force at
its back; but both here and on the banks of the Vistula England was
helpless. There was no Court of Appeal. Christendom had vanished amidst
the schemes of the monarchs in the East, and under the stabs of
regicides in the West. Thus, while the champions of monarchy were
sharing the last spoils of Poland, France succeeded in detaching Spain
from the royalist league by inciting her to the plunder of Portugal.

Few moves have been more mean and cowardly; though the conduct of the
Court of Madrid in this matter touches far deeper depths of infamy. For
its present position was far from hopeless. With the help of the British
fleet the progress of the French troops towards Bilbao might have been
stayed. Affairs in Catalonia wore a hopeful aspect. England offered to
recognize the Spanish conquests in Hayti and to press for further
indemnities from France at the general peace. But all representations
were in vain. Godoy brushed them aside in order to compass the ruin of
the House of Braganza. On this enterprise he concentrated all his
faculties. He inveighed against the invasion of Hayti by British troops.
"His Britannic Majesty," he said, "ought to have abstained from any
interference with the island of San Domingo, upon the whole of which His
Christian Majesty had a well-founded claim; or, if any enterprize was
undertaken there by Great Britain, it should have been in the way of
auxiliary to Spain in order to restore to her her ancient possessions in
the West Indies." On other occasions he moaned over the heavy expenses
of the war, the misery of the people, and the impossibility of resisting
the superior power of France. But his chief theme was Hayti, and he
finally suggested that the British acquisitions in that island should
be held