But on December 2, 1809, the Portland Cabinet gave place to Spencer Perceval’s new administration, and Wellington had to reiterate the arguments which he had used to Castlereagh and Canning to new correspondents, Lord Liverpool and Lord Bathurst. Fortunately the incoming ministers resolved to adhere to the promises made by their predecessors, and to persist in the defence of Portugal. It was of immense value to Wellington that his brother Wellesley soon replaced Lord Bathurst at the Foreign Office, so that he could command in this Ministry a supporter as firm as Castlereagh had been in the last. Nevertheless his position was not entirely fortunate: the new administration was being fiercely assailed by the Whigs over the general policy of risking British armies on the Continent. The calamities of the Walcheren expedition supplied a text on which the Opposition could preach interminable sermons. The men who were not ashamed to allege, for party reasons, that Wellington was a rash general, and that the Talavera campaign had been a disaster, were continually harassing the Ministry, by their suggestions that when the French Emperor marched in person to Spain the British army in the Peninsula must inevitably be destroyed. It was probably to aid them that Napoleon kept inserting in the _Moniteur_ articles in which it was asserted that the maintenance of the incapable ‘Sepoy General’ at the head of the British forces was the thing which France must most desire. In Lord Liverpool’s correspondence with Wellington it is easy to see that the idea that it might be necessary to evacuate Portugal, when the French attack was delivered, almost preponderated over that of preparing for the defence of that realm. While Wellington’s whole mind is set on working out the details of a campaign from which he hopes great things, his correspondent is always thinking of the possibility of a disastrous embarkation at the end of it. The General could not pledge himself that Portugal might be defended against any odds whatever: it was possible that the Emperor might lead or send against him an army of absolutely overpowering strength, though he did not think such a contingency probable. But since he could not say that his position was impregnable, he was being continually worried with suggestions as to all the possible contingencies that might occur to his discomfiture. The ministers dreaded that the Peninsular venture might end in a fiasco, like the Duke of York’s Dutch expedition of 1799, and thought that such a failure would lose them their offices. Hence they were nervous about every false rumour that reached them from France concerning the Emperor’s approaching departure; and the more certain information about the immense numbers of troops that were passing the Pyrenees filled them with dread. It required all Wellington’s robust self-confidence to keep them reassured. He had to be perpetually repeating to them that all his