It is clear that the Portuguese government must have shrunk from many of Wellington’s suggestions on account of mere lack of resources. A third of the country had been at one time or another overrun by the French--the provinces north of the Douro in 1809, the Beira and northern Estremadura in 1810-11. It would take long years before they were in a position to make their former contributions to the expenses of the State. It was impossible to get over this hard fact: but Wellington thought that a rearrangement of taxes, and an honest administration of their levy, would produce a much larger annual revenue than was being raised in 1812. He pointed out, with some plausibility, that British money was being poured into Portugal by millions and stopped there: some one--the merchant and contractor for the most part--must be making enormous profits and accumulating untold wealth. Moreover he had discovered cases of the easy handling of the rich and influential in the matter of taxation, while the peasantry were being drained of their last farthing. Such little jobs were certain to occur in an administration of the _ancien régime_: fidalgos and capitalists knew how to square matters with officials at Lisbon. ‘A reform in the abuses of the Customs of Lisbon and Oporto, a more equal and just collection of the Income Tax on commercial property, particularly in those large and rich towns [it is scandalous to hear of the fortunes made by the mercantile classes owing to the war, and to reflect that they contribute practically nothing to bear its burdens], a reform of the naval establishment and the arsenal, would make the income equal to the expenditure, and the government would get on without calling upon Great Britain at every moment to find that which, in the existing state of the world, cannot be procured, viz. money[150].’ So wrote Wellington, who was always being irritated by discovering that the magazines of Elvas or Almeida were running low, or that recruits were not rejoining their battalions because there was no cash to arm or clothe them, or that troops in the field were getting half-rations, unless they were on the British subsidy list. [150] See tables on pp. 324-5 of Halliday’s _Present State of Portugal_, published in 1812.