These it is not in the power of their Chiefs to create; but they may preserve and procure to them opportunities of unfolding themselves, by guarding the Nation against an intemperate reliance on other qualities and other modes of exertion, to which it could never have resorted in the degree in which it appears to have resorted to them without having been in contradiction to itself, paying at the same time an indirect homage to its enemy.

Yet, in hazarding this conditional censure, we are still inclined to believe, that, in spite of our deductions on the score of exaggeration, we have still given too easy credit to the accounts furnished by the enemy, of the rashness with which the Spaniards engaged in pitched battles, and of their dismay after defeat.

For the Spaniards have repeatedly proclaimed, and they have inwardly felt, that their strength was from their cause--of course, that it was moral.

Why then should they abandon this, and endeavour to prevail by means in which their opponents are confessedly so much superior?
Moral strength is their's; but physical power for the purposes of immediate or rapid destruction is on the side of their enemies.

This is to them no disgrace, but, as soon as they understand themselves, they will see that they are disgraced by mistrusting their appropriate stay, and throwing themselves upon a power which for them must be weak.