[153] Set forth in detail, and with a sample bond for 1,000 dollars added, in _Dispatches_, ix. pp. 104-5. We shall have to be referring to this problem at several later points of the history of the campaign of 1812[154]: at the opening of the invasion of Leon in June it reached its worst point, just before the great victory of Salamanca. But it was always present, and when Wellington’s mind was not occupied with deductions as to the manœuvres of French marshals, it may undoubtedly be said that his main preoccupation was the normally depleted state of the military chest, into which dollars and guineas flowed, it is true, in enormous quantities, but only to be paid out at once, in settling arrears many months old. These were never fully liquidated, and began to accumulate again, with distressing rapidity, after every tardy settlement. [154] See especially below in chapter iii of section xxxiii. p. 349. Whig historians have often tried to represent Wellington’s financial difficulties as the fault of the home government, and it is easy to pick passages from his dispatches in which he seems to assert that he is not being supported according to his necessities. But a nearer investigation of the facts will not bear out this easy theory, the product of party spite. The Whigs of 1811-12 were occupied in decrying the Peninsular War as a failure, in minimizing the successes of Wellington, and in complaining that the vast sums of money lavished on his army were wasted. Napoleon was invincible, peace was the only way out of disaster, even if the peace must be somewhat humiliating. It was unseemly for their representatives, twenty years after, to taunt the Perceval and Liverpool ministries with having stinted Wellington in his hour of need. We have learnt to estimate at their proper value tirades against ‘the administration which was characterized by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his redeeming genius.’ We no longer think that the Napoleonic War was waged ‘to repress the democratic principle,’ nor that the cabinets which maintained it were ‘the rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights[155].’ [155] For these phrases and much more abuse, see Napier, iv. p. 199, a most venomous and unjust passage.