only served to confirm the justice and to increase the strength of our first impressions.

If we had seen the articles of the convention before we had read the account of the battle of Vimiera, we should have concluded that, instead of being victorious, our army had been completely de feated. And even then, we should have felt mortified at the conven→ tion. But independently of the particulars of the battle itself, which supply sufficient evidence of the fact, we have the acknowledgment of Sir Hew Dalrymple himself, that not we but “the enemy sustained a signal defeat.” As one half of our force had proved sufficient to beat the whole of the French army, we naturally concluded that our generals would follow up the blow which they had struck, and by a rapid march of that part of our force which had not been engaged, have endeavoured to intercept the enemy on their return to Lisbon. At all events we were convinced that not a moment would be lost in improving our advantage to the utmost, and in compelling the unconditional surrender of Junot's troops.

But from the moment of Sir Hew Dalrymple's arrival, the whole army seem to have been palsied; for never was such a contrast exhibited, as that which their conduct before and after the battle of Vimiera presented. The French commander, aware that his situation was desperate, and that no chance of escape remained, hastened to court a suspension of arms, and to negotiate a convention. This conduct was also sufficient to convince the British commander, that Junot had no means of successful resistance left; for the history of the war between the two countries supplies not a single instance of such a proposal being made by a French general who was not deprived of every hope of escape. If he were duped by the boasting declaration that the French army would never consent to become prisoners of war, his total ignorance of the character of the enemy incapacitated him for his situation.

Having offered these few preliminary reflections, we proceed consider the articles of the suspension of arms, and of the definitive convention. The very first article, which we are utterly astonished that Sir Arthur Wellesley could sanction with his truly respectable name, though acting under the immediate direction and controul of the commander in chief, is most objectionable; as it contains a di rect acknowledgment of the usurped power of the Corsican, who, for the first time in a British official document, is hailed as Emperor and King! The second article, by postponing the definitive ar

rangement to a future day, defeats the very object which Sir Hew Dalrymple professed to have in view. The fifth article makes a great and unprecedented concession to the enemy, without exacting any return whatever; a concession which, at all events, ought to have been reserved for the final treaty, and to have been made the condition of some adequate advantage to ourselves; and a concession, Lastly, wholly unjustified by the relative situations of the respective armies, which ought, on no account, to have been made. But this is not the only unjustifiable provision of the fifth article; for it allows the whole French army to be conveyed to France; "with arms and baggage, and all their private property of every description, no part of which shall be wrested from them." Here the British general assumed an authority which he did not possess, and which, if he had possessed it, he ought not to have exercised. He could not be ignorant that, when the French entered Portugal, they had no baggage, and no private property whatever; and he must have known that this stipulation was only insisted on, on their part, in order to enable them to carry off, without molestation, the fruits of their rapine; the property of which they had, in a manner which disgraced them, both as soldiers and as men, robbed the Portuguese. All this baggage and private property, then, were the real property of the Portuguese; and, putting out of the question the indelible disgrace attached to the sanction of such acts of lawless violence, we insist, that the British general had no right or power to give the French a legal title to it; or to prevent the lawful owners from wresting the whole of it from them. By such conduct, we become accessaries after the fact, and voluntary partakers in the criminality of the deed. This is a truth so obvious and so glaring, that it is scarcely credible that it could have escaped the observation even of the most inattentive, weak, and incapable negotiator. It would appear, by this article, which cannot be read without indignation and rage, by any man who feels for the honour or the interests of his native land, that, instead of compelling the Freuch army to leave the country by the force of British armis, we bribed them to depart with the plunder of Portugal. But radically bad as the article was, as it stood in the preliminary agreement, it is rendered much worse, by the definitive arrangement. For there the boon to the French is extended, the bribe is enlarged: to the possession of their arms and baggage, is superadded not only the liberty of serving on their arrival in France; to which we kindly nadertake to convey them, at our own expence; but the privilege of

taking with them all their artillery, horses, and sixty rounds of am munition, their military chest, and their carriages; that, on their arrival, they may be ready equipped for the field, and fully prepared to act against our Spanish allies. They are allowed to embark eight hundred horses, or to sell what they cannot conveniently embark however acquired, whether purchased or stolen!

By the sixth article of the suspension it is agreed, that "no indi vidual, whether native of Portugal, or of France, shall be molested for his political conduct; they shall be protected in their persons, their properties respected, and they shall be at liberty to remové from Portugal, with what belongs to them, within a stipulated time."

We will venture to assert, without fear of contradiction, that this article stands without a parallel in the anuals of diplomacy, previous to the French Revolution. Since that horrible period, indeed, it has been a constant practice with the French, whenever they have dic tated the terms of a treaty, to stipulate for the impunity of those rebels and traitors who have forwarded their views in the different countries which have been cursed with their presence. But this is the first time, and we hope it will be the last, that a British general has lent his sanction to a principle of rebellion, which violates all duty, and destroys all allegiance. The article, however, is essentially null, for no British general could have the right to consent to it. What? shall one of our commanders presume to exercise the high preroga tive of the Sovereign of Portugal, and to grant pardon to his criminal subjects? Or rather, shall he presume to insult that Sovereign, by extending impunity and protection to rebels and traitors, who have joined the enemies of his country, and the usurpers' of his throne? If such presumption be permitted to pass without a rigid investigation and appropriate reproof, we shall become the scoff and mockery of Europe; an object of ridicule to our enemies, and of dread to our allies.

By the seventeenth article of the definitive convention, this principle is adopted, and extended to persons who actually accepted situa tions under the French in Portugal, the assurance of their good friends the French being taken for gospel, that they had no option in the acceptance of such situations. And, although the property of traitors becomes, in every country, the property of the crown, by confiscation, the British commander has made no scruple to grant the Portuguese rebels the privilege of disposing of their property, and

of retiring with its produce to the only country which they will not dishonour by their presence, to the general country of all traitors, France.

By the sixteenth article of the convention, too, the promised secu rity is farther extended to the unmoveable property of French subjects; no doubt for the purpose of including Mr. Junot's usurped domain of Abrantes, from which he derives the title which the grand usurper of the throne of the Bourbons has conferred on him, and which our negotiating generals have so liberally acknowledged. We know not in whom that territory vested, before the irruption of the Gallic barbarians into Portugal; but we should like to hear the observation of a Portuguese judge, on the claim of a purchaser deriving his right from the stipulations of a British general, in opposition to the lawful proprietor. If he did not treat the claim with indignation or contempt, he would be a very unworthy minister of justice.

In the seventh article of the suspension, the British negotiator leaps over all the boundaries of concession, into the unfathomable depths of liberality. He extends his kind protection from the French to their allies, and allows the Russian fleet to sail, unmolested, from the Tagus! Fortunately, the British admiral, whose sanction was requisite, refused his consent to this monstrous stipulation, and entered himself into a separate convention with the Russian admiral. Though this naval convention may be considered as comparatively good, it must be regarded as positively bad; for it immediately releases all the Russian officers and men, who are to be sent home, at our expence, to act against our allies the Swedes; so that our transports, instead of being engaged in the conveyance of British troops for the annoyance of our enemies, are to be employed in the transportation of French and Russians, for the annoyance of our friends! It is rather extraordinary that it should have never occurred to our commanders, that as the French troops are to be sent home armed, there will be nothing to prevent them froni seizing the ships appointed to convey them, making the crews prisoners, and directing their course whithersoever they may choose. And, should they not do this, what security have we, or can we have, for the return of the ships? To repose confidence in men who have violated every principle and broken every tie, by which either soldiers or citizens are bound, is folly, not generosity. Besides, were the French officers disposed to fulfil their part of the agreement, its fulfilment will not

depend upon themselves; but on the port officers appointed by the tyrant, their master, who has refused to observe the common usageș of war, to establish a cartel for the exchange of prisoners, or even to allow prisoners to return who had been released on their parole; who has ordered flags of truce, respected by all civilized states, to be fired on; and who, in a word, has abrogated all the established laws of nations, and substituted his own wil in their stead.

The naval convention is singular, in another point of view; for the enemy's ships are not to be subjected to any operation or process known to our naval commanders, or acknowledged by the jus maritimum of this or of any other country. They are not to be burnt, sunk, destroyed, or placed in the list of the British navy. No, for sooth; our admiral has assumed a new character, has turned pawn• broker, and taken them in pledge; or, in the more polite phraseology of the convention, he has agreed to hold them as a deposit, an expression for the true signification and accurate definition of which we shall feel highly indebted to any of our law-readers. The fact we suppose to be this: that we are kindly to take charge of these ships of his Imperial Majesty Alexander, (who, be it observed, is the miserable tool of Buonaparte, and who has endeavoured, in Finland, to imitate his ferocious and sanguinary conduct, to the eternal disgrace of the Russian army, now richly deserving to be stigmatized as “barbarians,") to lodge them safely in one of our ports, to keep them' in good repair, and liberally to restore them, on the conclusion of a peace, without any condition, and without the smallest indemnifica tion for any expence which we may have incurred. We are very much disposed to question the authority of a British admiral to conclude any such convention as this; unless, indeed, which we cannot suppose, he acted in obedience to particular instructions from the Admiralty. If he had no such instructions, the articles of war, as applicable to the navy, could form the only rule of his conduct; and we risk nothing in a defiance to produce any thing in these articles which could justify the consent to hold an enemy's fleet in deposit during the war.

After this brief review of the leading articles of the two conventions, our readers will not be surprised at our decided opinion, that by them the just expectations of the country have been defeated; the spirits of our soldiers and seamen depressed; the lustre of the Bri tish arms dimmed; and tie honour of the nation tarnished.

Having analysed the terms of the convention, it is now proper to