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, therefore, that permission to carry off the booty was distinctly expressed; and, if it had not been so, that the principle of justice could not here be preserved; as a violation of it must necessarily have followed from other conditions of the treaty.
Sir Hew Dalrymple himself, before the Court of Inquiry, has told us, in two letters (to Generals Beresford and Friere,) that 'such part of the plunder as was in money, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to identify;' and, consequently, the French could not be prevented from carrying it away with them.

From the same letters we learn, that 'the French were intending to carry off a considerable part of their plunder, by calling it public money, and saying that it belonged to the military chest; and that their evasions of the article were most shameful, and evinced a want of probity and honour, which was most disgraceful to them.' If the French had given no other proofs of their want of such virtues, than those furnished by this occasion, neither the Portugueze, nor Spanish, nor British nations would condemn them, nor hate them as they now do; nor would this article of the Convention have excited such indignation.

For the French, by so acting, could not deem themselves breaking an engagement; no doubt they looked upon themselves as injured,--that the failure in good faith was on the part of the British; and that it was in the lawlessness of power, and by a mere quibble, that this construction was afterwards put upon the article in question.
Widely different from the conduct of the British was that of the Spaniards in a like case:--with high feeling did they, abating not a jot or a tittle, enforce the principle of justice.

'How,' says the governor of Cadiz to General Dupont in the same noble letter before alluded to, 'how,' says he, after enumerating the afflictions which his army, and the tyrant who had sent it, had unjustly brought upon the Spanish nation, (for of these, in _their_ dealings with the French, they never for a moment lost sight,) 'how,' asks he, 'could you expect, that your army should carry off from Spain the fruit of its rapacity, cruelty, and impiety?
how could you conceive this possible, or that we should be so stupid or senseless ?' And this conduct is as wise in reason as it is true to nature.