If you have only a choice between two masters, (such an advocate might have argued) chose always the stronger: for he, after his evil passions have had their first harvest, confident in his strength, will not torment you wantonly in order to prove it.

Besides, the property which he has in you he can maintain; and there will be no risk of your being torn in pieces--the unsettled prey of two rival claimants.
You will thus have the advantage of a fixed and assured object of your hatred: and your fear, being stripped of doubt, will lose its motion and its edge: both passions will relax and grow mild; and, though they may not turn into reconcilement and love, though you may not be independent nor be free, yet you will at least exist in tranquillity,--and possess, if not the activity of hope, the security of despair.' No effectual answer, I say, could have been given to a man pleading thus in such circumstances.

So much for the choice of evils.

But, for the hope of good!--what is to become of the efforts and high resolutions of the Portugueze and Spanish Nations, manifested by their own hand in the manner which we have seen?
They may live indeed and prosper; but not by us, but in despite of us.
Whatever may be the character of the Portugueze Nation; be it true or not, that they had a becoming sense of the injuries which they had received from the French Invader, and were rouzed to throw off oppression by a universal effort, and to form a living barrier against it;--certain it is that, betrayed and trampled upon as they had been, they held unprecedented claims upon humanity to secure them from further outrages .-- Moreover, our conduct towards them was grossly inconsistent.
For we entered their country upon the supposition that they had such sensibility and virtue; we announced to them publickly and solemnly our belief in this: and indeed to have landed a force in the Peninsula upon any other inducement would have been the excess of folly and madness.
But the Portugueze _are_ a brave people--a people of great courage and worth! Conclusions, drawn from intercourse with certain classes of the depraved inhabitants of Lisbon only, and which are true only with respect to them, have been hastily extended to the whole Nation, which has thus unjustly suffered both in our esteem and in that of all Europe.
In common with their neighbours the Spaniards, they _were_ making a universal, zealous, and fearless effort; and, whatever may be the final issue, the very act of having risen under the pressure and in the face of the most tremendous military power which the earth has ever seen--is itself evidence in their favour, the strongest and most comprehensive which can be given; a transcendent glory! which, let it be remembered, no subsequent failures in duty on their part can forfeit.

This they must have felt--that they had furnished an illustrious example; and that nothing can abolish their claim upon the good wishes and upon the gratitude of mankind, which is--and will be through all ages their due.
At such a time, then, injuries and insults from any quarter would have been deplorable; but, proceeding from us, the evil must have been aggravated beyond calculation.