But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,
Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly.
Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,
The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!
But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat
Retrieved three long Olympiads of defeat?
"Look last at home—ye love not to look there
On the grim smile of comfortless despair:240
Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,
Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.
See all alike of more or less bereft;
No misers tremble when there's nothing left.
'Blest paper credit;'[1] who shall dare to sing?
- ↑
"Blest paper credit! last and best supply,
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly."(Pope.)[In February, 1811, a select committee of the House of Commons "on commercial credit" recommended an advance of £6,000,000 to manufacturers who were suffering from over-speculation. "Did they not know," asked Lord Grenville, in the House of Lords, March 21, "that they were adding to the mass of paper at this moment in existence a sum of £6,000,000, as if there was not paper enough already in the country, in order to protect their commerce and manufactures from destruction?" Nevertheless, the measure passed. The year before (February 19, 1810), a committee which had sat under the presidency of Francis Horner, to
the British contingent, and took part in the engagement. The year before, at Busaco (September 27, 1810), the Portuguese had displayed signal bravery; but at Gebora (February 19, 1811) "Madden's Portuguese, regardless of his example and reproaches, shamefully turned their backs" (Napier's History of the Peninsular War (1890), iii. 26, 98, 102-107).]
