Our obligations had been contracted with the old
Portuguese monarchy. Our treaty bound us to consult the external
safety of Portugal; and not to examine, to challenge, or to champion
its internal institutions. If _we_ examined their new institutions
for the sake of deriving from them new motives for fulfilling our old
engagements, with what propriety could we prohibit _other_ Powers from
examining them for the purpose of drawing any other conclusion? It
was enough to say that such internal changes no way affected our
engagements with Portugal; that we felt ourselves as much bound to
defend her, under her altered constitution, as under the ancient
monarchy, with which our alliance had been contracted. More than
this we could not say; and more than this it was not her interest to
require.
And what is the obligation of this alliance? To defend Portugal--to
assist her, if necessary, with all our forces, in case of an
unprovoked attack upon her territory. This, however, does not give to
Portugal any right to call on us, if she were attacked in consequence
of her _voluntarily_ declaring war against another Power. By engaging
in the cause of Spain, without any direct provocation from France, she
would unquestionably lose all claim upon our assistance. The rendering
that assistance would then become a question of policy, not of duty.
Surely my honourable and learned friend (Sir James Mackintosh), who
has declaimed so loudly on this subject, knows as well as any man,
that the course which we are bound to follow, in any case affecting
Portugal, is marked out in our treaties with that Crown, with singular
accuracy and circumspection.
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