By this it is stipulated, 'That, from the date of the ratification of the Convention, all arrears of contributions, requisitions, or claims whatever of the French Government against subjects of Portugal, or any other individuals residing in this country, founded on the occupation of Portugal by the French troops in the month of December 1807, which may not have been paid up, are cancelled: and all sequestrations, laid upon their property moveable or immoveable, are removed; and the free disposal of the same is restored to the proper owners.' Which amounts to this.

The French are called upon formally to relinquish, in favour of the Portugueze, that to which they never had any right; to abandon false claims, which they either had a power to enforce, or they had not: if they departed immediately and had _not_ power, the article was nugatory; if they remained a day longer and _had_ power, there was no security that they would abide by it.

Accordingly, loud complaints were made that, after the date of the Convention, all kinds of ravages were committed by the French upon Lisbon and its neighbourhood: and what did it matter whether these were upon the plea of old debts and requisitions; or new debts were created more greedily than ever--from the consciousness that the time for collecting them was so short?
This article, then, the only one which is even in shew favourable to the Portugueze, is, in substance, nothing: inasmuch as, in what it is silent upon, (viz.

that the People of Lisbon and its neighbourhood shall not be vexed and oppressed by the French, during their stay, with new claims and robberies,) it is grossly cruel or negligent; and, in that for which it actually stipulates, wholly delusive.

It is in fact insulting; for the very admission of a formal renunciation of these claims does to a certain degree acknowledge their justice.