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of imposture that has appeared in print for many years, but I have not time; and, besides, nothing should be mixed with this discussion relative to the Convention. It is what is doing and to be done here, here, here at home, that ought to engage our great care and attention. What care I about Ferdinand and Joseph. I am not to have my wits drawn away by this tub to the whale.Little room as I have, however, I cannot help pointing out to the attention of the reader, a pamphlet, just published, under the following title: "An Appeal to "the Public and a farewell Address to the "Army, by BREVET MAJOR HOGAN, who resigned his commission, in consequence of "the treatment he experienced from the "Duke of York, and of the system that

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prevails in the army, RESPECTING PRO"MOTIONS." This, I scruple not to say, is the most interesting publication that has appeared in England for many years. It should be read by every individual in the nation. Oh, what a story does this gentleman tell! What a picture does he exhibit! What facts does he unfold! If this produce no effect upon the public, why, then, we are so base and rascally a crew, that it is no matter what becomes of us. We are unworthy of the name of men, and are beneath the beasts that perish. Botley, 20th Oct. 1868.

CONVENTION IN PORTUGAL. SIR;-When I addressed you on the 19th ult. under the then recent impression which the Conventions in Portugal had made upon me, I noticed every circumstance of them that seemed to call for animadversion. I have since attended to the public discussions on this important subject, and in particular to those very judicious and dispassionate observations which have appeared under your name. I have there seen my own opinions confirmed and strengthened by an able developement of topics on which I had only briefly commented; I have derived additional information from the exposition of several incidental points connected with the main question; and I have, in general, observed, with a satisfaction which is to me the source of much hope and sanguine expectation for the public weal, the periodical and political writers of the United King dom (with one solitary and despicable exception) zealously employing their pens and presses, in holding up to universal indignation, the transactions of our commanders in Portugal, in calling for justice upon the guilty, and in thus rescuing the British nation from the "deep damnation" of conniv

ing at what, until some great act of national justice has taken place, must be considered as fixing a most hateful stain upon the na tional character.-But, Mr. Cobbett, I have looked in vain amongst all the writers on our present subject for any thing amounting to a pretence of justification of the Conventions; still less have I been able to find what could be called a plausible excuse for the persons implicated in the conclusion of them. The exception above alluded to is the Morning Post, the only print that has endeavoured to screen one of the actors in this drama from public indignation by the means (equally discreditable to the principal and his agent) of transferring the blame to an absent and a weaker party. This print has, however, so perpetually shifted its ground of arg ment; has so often stated facts and revoked them; has had so often recourse to insinua tion and misrepresentation where plain and direct language would not suit its purpose and has now taken such undue advantage the hacknied device of forging letters from the fleet and army in Portugal;—that it is im possible to say how it would now state the case of its patron if called upon to make i short summary of his apology. We are, moreover, entitled to entertain this doubl from the conduct of the Morning Post since, as well as before, Sir A. Wellesley's retum from Portugal. That event has afforded the public no more satisfactory ground than already possessed for thinking well of the Conventions. In fact, nothing has be said by Sir A. Wellesley or his friends, sine his arrival in England, to justify his conduct they have abandoned their original ground the famous Protest and Sir Arthur's passin agency; and they have substituted nothing in lieu thereof; so that Sir Arthur stands at this moment, arraigned for misconduc before the British public, and not a ple nor any thing that deserves the name of gument, is offered in his defence. It may said that his great mind disdains to answer wha he calls the petty captious bickerings of vulgar; that he reserves his justification fo the grand military inquisition that will here after set at the Horse Guards. Be it so but, if this contempt of public opinion be really the motive of his silence, his friend have strangely mistaken his character in the many awkward attempts that they have made in his favour. It has been said tha Sir A arrived in England quite ignorant the impression made amongst us by his pro ceedings, and thinking that he had accons plished an amazing feat in getting the Fresh out of Portugal by means of his Conventions. I very much doubt this. I believe, on the

contrary, that he well knew, before he left Portugal, how those acts had been received, not only by the nation at large but also by This majesty's government; and that his coming over, without being recalled, was owing to the advice of his friends here, who, in conformity to the old adage that "the "absent are always in the wrong," thought that he would do well to come and make good his own story, leaving his superior officers to the chance of what their friends might be able to do for them. It is at the

same time but justice to Sir A. to observe, that the circumstance of his plan of defence by recrimination being abandoned, does look as if he were unwilling to sanction so base a proceeding, though he has brought his officious defenders into a scrape very common to injudicious friends,-that of being betrayed into meanness which their very patron is ashamed of and obliged to disavow, At all events, if it should be true that Sir Arthur came away from Portugal in the belief that he had acted meritoriously, and had only to receive on his arrival the plaudits of a grateful country, he could not have been long in England without being undeceived. The very boatmen who landed his baggage, the porter who strapped it on his carriage, must have stared reproof in his face; the looks of every creature he met would apprise him of his fallen estate. When he reached town, he must have learned from his friends the many atrocious ca lumnies (as they would call them) that had issued against him from the press since the Conventions were known; or even if, through delicacy, his friends should not have told him all, the first file of newspapers that he laid his hand upon would shew him how much lee-way he had to make up in the public opinion. Is it then probable, Sir, that under these circumstances any man even of ordinary ambition, and although you do adwit him in some sort to despise the vulgar bias of the public mind, should be so far indifferent to his fame, as to neglect any means he night possess of giving a favourable turn to his case? In short, Sir, had Sir A. Wellesley had any thing that could make in his favour, that would be sufficient, I will not say to stop, but even to suspend for a moment, or to slacken the cur rent that now so strongly runs against him, do you think that he would have withheld it? I am convinced that he would not; and I there fure infer, that he has nothing of this nature to advance. What, then, you will say, must become of him when, in the hour of public trial, which hour (I differ from you Mr. Cobbett in thinking) must come, he

shall be called upon for his public defence and justification?-Having told you what I believe that he has not done, only because he could not do it, I will tell you what I as firmly believe will happen upon the occasion to which I look forward.-Whenever a public inquiry into this business takes place, you may depend upon it that we shall be told that the nation has been labouring under a most strange and unaccountable mistake; for that, instead of a calamity, which they seem (poor, silly, ignorant people!) to think has befallen them, they have received a great and signal benefit from the very person on whom they are now calling for judgment. In what that benefit will be made to consist might indeed be difficult to guess, were it not that we have been already told, that the ridding Portugal at any rate of the French army was to be considered as such. This, thea, is the greatnational advantage, that we Englishmen have derived from the immense expence of an armament, such as was never before sent out of British ports, and from the gallantry of our soldiers displayed in two signal defeats of the enemy --Yes, Sir, this, we shall be told, was the main end and object of the expedition; this has been accomplished, and therefore we ought to be satisfied. To give plausibility to this story, you see that Junot's "whole army" is already magnified from 14,000, which were all he could muster at Vimeira, to 25 or even 27,000, which are to be conveyed in our transports from Lisbon to Rochefort; but you very well know too, that if tonnage has really been demanded for this number of men, they will consist of any thing but combatants: probably sick, wounded, civilians, and a very large proportion of renegado Portuguese. Neverthe

less shall we be told, that these noted Conventions have driven out of Portugal the whole 25,000 men, just as Lord Castlereagh gravely informed us last year that Lord Cathcart had achieved the conquest of Zealand, when there were 35,000 Danes in arms to oppose him, though every drummer in our army knew, that, excepting the garririsons of Copenhagen and Cronberg, amounting altogether to 6,000 men, there was not, at the time of the capitulation, nor, for many days previous to it, a single man in arms in the whole island; and that there had at no time been one regular battalion without the walls of the above-mentioned towns ?-That this deliverance of Portugal was not available for the farther operations of the war; that it did not set a man of, ours at liberty to assist the Spaniards, but on the contrary deprived our army of the transports in which it might have been conveyed near the scene

of action on the Pyrenees; that it does actually give the French a large and well appointed disposable force which they would not otherwise have possessed; these considerations are to be regarded as trifling when compared to the main object." We have got Portugal, though not ail belonging to it: we have got rid of the French there; no maiter what becomes of them-charity be gins at home-and if these same French should march over the Pyrenees and help to beat the Spanish Patriots, why we are very sorry for it, but cur business was to get them out of Portugal: and as to the few little advantages which the French obtained in the course of the negociation and in wording the Conventions, besides that they also are very subordinate considerations, is it our fault that Kellermann was the best negociator of the two? Sir Arthur is a soldier, not a statesman; he has shewn that he could fight and beat the French too; is he to be blamed because he cannot wield the pen as well as the sword, or because Kellermann, who is probably some dull plodding German as his name indicates, and never fought a successful battle in his life, should get and keep the whip hand of him in the course of a long, intricate, and most difficult negociation?"--This, I make no doubt, is the sort of reasoning with which we shall be hereafter edified. But it will not, I dare say, Sir, have escaped your observation, that your correspondent C. has, in your last number, brought forward some "secret motives, and those very strong ones, to influence the determination of our commanders to agree to a conditional surrender." This Mr. C. must surely be one of Sir Arthur's indiscreet injudicious friends, or he never would even have hinted at secret motives in a case, from which, of all ott.ers, secrecy seems most necessary to be banished. What, in the name of heaven, could be the secret motives in such a case. unless they consisted in the very convenient, though not very honourable, preference given to the sort of service that was to follow the Conventions, over that which must have been undertaken to force Junot and his army to unconditional surrender? As to C.'s quibbling about your expression of "next arrival," it may, together with his other miserable shifts and subterfuges, be safely left to the corrective energy of your own pen, which has very properly characterized him and the cause in which he is embarked. The whole nation will bear you testimony that it did expect (and not without reason), that the next advices of any importance from the army would announce the surren

der of the French at discretion, and that the vessel that brought those advices would also bring two or three of the principal French generals by way of a sample of what ours had been able to achieve.-This, I can at least vouch, was the general sentiment throughout the metropolis, and it should seem that the counties were to the full as sanguine.-But, since we are on the subject of" secret motives," I will suggest for your consideration one which I think more likely than any other to have influenc ed the determination of our commanders; one which must not only have embarrassed them greatly at the time of framing the Conventions, but which will, if they are good courtiers as I take them to be, enibar. rass them still more when they come to unfold their motives to the people of England.

Did you never hear, Mr. Cobbett, of such a thing as an INSTRUCTION to a commander drawn up with studied ambiguity, or so encumbered with a multitude of expletiveswith paragraph within paragraph-parenthe sis within parenthesis hypothesis built upon hypothesis--and the whole so interlarded with ifs and buts that it might be construed any and every way save into a direct, clear, and positive meaning? And did you never hear, Sir, that Lord Castle reagh was famous for giving such Instructions? There is no act of any description for which a saving clause hay not be found) in such a dispatch; and there is no clause in it by which any one act can be positively justified. Yet it is such a dispatch under whose influence I am told our commanders acted; and if my information be correct, as I have no doubt it is, their embarrassment, as to what defence they shall set up, will be most naturally accounted for.-But, Sir, let us now look a little farther forward into the consequences of this business; let us see whether it be not possible to extract) some eventual good out of the evil that we thus grievously lament. I quite agree with you, that to lose our time in fruitless whining and complaints is to act in a manner very unbecoming men and good citizens. We are, if we do our duty, to see if some prac tical good may not hereafter result from the confidence of the nation having been thus shamefully abused. We know from the language of the throne hat an inquiry is to take place. Whatever may be the seatence pronounced in a military view, it must be obvious to every body that the source of the evil is not altogether of a mi litary nature, and that it is one which a military court of inquiry is not very likely to notice or to animadvert upon with much

this sort should be made, was absolutely to say to ourally the Prince Regent, " You shall be no longer master of your country We have done yout he favour of driving out the French for you, but you have no business to inquire how they came there, or by whom they have been aided or abetted. You shall be nominal sovereign of Portugal, but we will carry on the police for you." In short, it is as completely dethroning the Prince Regent as if we had sent him word that he should not return to Europe now that he has a comfortable home at the Brazils. You, Sir, have asked a very pertinent question : "What would the French government have done had its generals made such a Convention as ours have made?" In the first place, Buonaparte, who knows how to choose his men, would hardly have employed a general capable of such a transaction; or if, from favouritism or any family consideration,-for these do sometimes prevail at St. Cloud also,―he did send such a person to command an army, he would have placed a proper check upon him in the second in command, or in the chief of the staff. If, however, after all, such an act had been committed, I have very little doubt that he would have instantly disgraced all the parties concerned in it.

harshness. What I allude to, Sir, is the practice that has obtained of late years of military and naval commanders negociating and binding their country to stipulations which are altogether beyond the competency of their functions. It is a question in my mind how far the country is, in honour and good faith, obliged to abide by conditions thus subscribed to. I am very much of opinion that the country is under no such obligation; for if you carry the same principle but a little farther, it would be a necessary Consequence that if Lord Cathcart, or Gen. Whitelocke, or Sir H. Dalrymple, or any ether of your Convention-making generals had, besides giving up the advantages they respectively possessed, chosen to surrender Portsmouth, or Chatham lines, we must equally have been bound to admit an enemy's garrison into them. The Duke of York's stipulating for the surrender of 8,000 French prisoners who were well and securely lodged in our prison-ships and barracks does come as near as possible to such a supposition. But if this be a question open for the discussions of the learned in the law of nations, I imagine that it is not a matter of doubt whether it would be better to restrict our generals in future from committing heir country by similar engagement.-Some discretionary power is no doubt necessary -The warning he has given Dupont to the command of an army: but then that of what is to be his fate sufficiently indicates power should be as much as possible of a what would have been his conduct in the military nature. The extreme of an evil case you have contemplated. I think then, is in some cases its best cure; and it will Sir, that some practical good may arise out now be felt that there is a point beyond of the Conventions; because I think that which a general may not transgress the li- they will serve as a warning to ministers what mits of his command. To apply this obInstructions they give generals; and as a servation to the Conventions, I would ask, warning to generals not to exceed the pow what could be so entirely extra-military, so ers intrusted to them. They must, I think, exclusively a political consideration as the be productive of a new system in these resacknowledgement contained in the first arti- pects; for even if Lord Castlereagh should, cle of Sir A. Wellesley's armistice, of his for the misfortune of the country, continue imperial and royal majesty Napoleon I.? to direct the war department, he must still It is no matter whether the said Napoleon see that he will, in the end, run too great a would or would not, at some future day, risk should he always give obscure unintellihave been acknowledged by us in that capa-gible instructions, and should his generals, city; it could never belong to a general commanding an army on a foreign station to determine the time or mode of so doing.-If I am told that it is an unmeaning complimentary article, and that Buonaparte is not the more an emperor because Sir A. Wellesley chose to call him so, I have only to reply, then why do not you upon the same plea get rid of the Conventious altogether? Again, what could be more an un-military and political concern than the inquiry into the conduct of the Portuguese during the French occupation of their country? moreover that no inquiry of

To stipulate

for want of a better guide, always blunder over their business in the way we have so often witnessed.-The inquiry that will take place about the Portugal Conventions will set these matters in their proper light, and it will also, I trust, expose to public reprobation that other part of our intercourse with foreign powers, which, under the specious name of conciliation, moderation, &c. would sacrifice the dignity and often the best inte rests of the country to a mistaken notion of personal feeling and propriety.-I expect to hear upon this subject, that it was perfectly genteel and well-bred to treat Junot and his

army in the manner we have done after having beat them in the field: that it was the bias of a great and generous mind, soaring above little narrow and vulgar national prejudices, to shew that as we were great so we could be merciful; and that it might conciliate the good-will of other countries-of France and of Russia, for instance-to let them see that when victorious we could set bounds to our triumphs, and not carry our resentment to extremes. You may believe me, Sir, it is not with this amiable part of the British character that the nations of the world want to be made acquainted. They give us full credit for disinterestedness, moderation, and generosity; they know that we would never strike or insult a fallen enemy; but they are not so certain of our acting with that vigour that would convince both friends and foes that we are not to be insulted with impunity; that we are resolved to obtain satisfaction proportioned to the injuries that

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pedition, had no other thought in his head than how he should land his army; when that is done he must take time to look about him; and if unmolested by the enemy he sits quietly down upon the shore to consume the provisions brought for him in a fleet of victuallers. It is then fortunate if he does not think it necessary to send home for fresh instructions before he proceeds any farther. At length up comes the enemy. You observed, no doubt, at the time, that on the 21st August our army was the attacked not the attacking party; and I have been informed, from very credible authority, that our general knew so little of his opponent's movements, that the troops were three times put under arms and as often dismissed in the night of the 20th; and that it was only at six o'clock in the morning, when Junot's main body wa seen within a very short distance of ours, that we discovered what his intentions really were. If it had not been for Juvot's adopt

we receive; that our exertions will not slack-ing the spirited resolution of marching out of en until the just object of our undertakings be accomplished; and that, at any rate, we are not to be gulled by the artifices of the first intriguer with whom we may happen to have to deal. This is what the people of the continent want to see; they feel that instead of our being Machiavelists, as Buonaparte calls us, all the Machiavelism is on his side, and that we have too often carried on our concerns with other powers with an awkwardness, and a want of system bordering upon silliness.-They think that we make immense efforts to produce very trifling comparative benefits. The nation gives with profusion money and men; the government is at times active in employing them ; our soldiers and sailors fight most valiantly and yet, in the end, what does it all avail us -We either fail in our object as at the Helder, or obtain it but partially as in the case of Portugal. What can this be owing to but to a defect or to a total want of system? We see things through too small a medium, or we do not look far enough into the consequences of them. Hence it follows, that when we are successful, what with surprise and joy, we are so confused that we know not what to do next. -The actions of the 17th and 21st August, do infinite honour to the bravery of our troops, and we certainly were not behind-hand in bestowing a full measure of applause upon their commanders; but it is clear to me that those actions will be noticed in history, more for the inadequate effects which they produced than for any credit that may be due to the persons engaged in them. It really seems as if a British general, going on the command of an ex

Lisbon to give us battle, he might, according
to our mode of proceeding, of which tle
having three different commanders-in-chief
in the course of 36 hours is no immateria
trait, have puzzled them all three so as per-
haps to be at this moment in possession of
that capital. As it was, we were forced to
fight, and our soidiers fought as they alway
have done. But was it enough to beat the
enemy in an encounter which in the sevis
years' war would have been considered as
more than a sharp affair of advanced guard®
Where would Buonaparte now be, it, after
the battle of Auerstadt, he bad sat himse
quietly down before the town, concluded #
armistice, and enjoyed for ten days the
tickling compliments which one of the king
of Prussia's generals might have paid him of
the bravery of his troops, or the distinguish
ed conduct of any part of them ? — Why,
is probable that the Prussians would have re
covered from their panic; collected the
scattered corps; and taken up some position
in which to arrest the conqueror's march:
all events they would not have been devont
ed piecemeal, or compelled to surrender
discretion, before they could reach any ten
ble position. But Buonaparte's business wa
to take all possible advantage of his victory,
and to reach Berlin by the shortest road
Ours was to reach Lisbon. He marched his
distance in a shorter time than the Prussians.
We let the French escape and never stirred
from our ground. He then exemplified the
principle which we altogether neglect, an i
the neglect of which is, in my opinion, the
cause of much of our distress. With a
exultation, which is only pardonable when st

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