Contract the circle, and bring him to his family; such a man cannot protect _that_ with dignified loves.

Reduce his thoughts to his own person; he may defend himself,--what _he_ deems his honour; but it is the _action_ of a brave man from the impulse of the brute, or the motive of a coward.
But it is time to recollect that this vindication of human feeling began from an _hypothesis_,--that the _outward_ state of the mass of the Spanish people would be improved by the French usurpation.

To this I now give an unqualified denial.

Let me also observe to those men, for whose infirmity this hypothesis was tolerated,--that the true point of comparison does not lie between what the Spaniards have been under a government of their own, and what they may become under French domination; but between what the Spaniards may do (and, in all likelihood, will do) for themselves, and what Frenchmen would do for them.

But,--waiving this,--the sweeping away of the most splendid monuments of art, and rifling of the public treasuries in the conquered countries, are an apt prologue to the tragedy which is to ensue.