Yet their insolence was more intolerable than their rapacity, and their licentious habits worse than both. The Revolution had found the French a vicious people, and it had completed their corruption. It had removed all restraints of religion, all sense of honour, all regard for family or individual character; the sole object of their government was to make them soldiers, and for the purposes of such a government the wickedest men were the best. Junot himself set an example of profligacy: he introduced the fashion of lascivious dances, imported perhaps from Egypt ... one of them bears his name; and the Portugueze say that no man who regards the honour of his female relatives would suffer them to practise it. The Moors have left in the peninsula relics of this kind which are sufficiently objectionable: that, therefore, which could call forth this reprehension must be bad indeed. The decency of private families was insulted: the officers scrupled not to introduce prostitutes, without any attempt at disguising them, into the houses where they were quartered; and happy were the husbands and the parents who could preserve their wives and daughters from the attempts of these polluted guests. ♦STATE OF LISBON.♦ The situation of Lisbon, at this time, is one to which history affords no parallel: it suffered neither war, nor pestilence, nor famine, yet these visitations could scarcely have produced a greater degree of misery; and the calamity did not admit of hope, for whither at this time could Portugal look for deliverance? As the government was now effectually converted into a military usurpation, it became easy to simplify its operations; and most of the persons formerly employed in civil departments were dismissed from office. Some were at once turned off; others had documents given them, entitling them to be reinstated upon vacancies; a few had some trifling pension promised. All who had depended for employment and subsistence upon foreign trade were now destitute. Whole families were thus suddenly reduced to poverty and actual want. Their trinkets went first; whatever was saleable followed: things offered for sale at such a time were sold at half their value, while the price of food was daily augmenting. It was a dismal thing to see the Mint beset with persons who carried thither the few articles of plate with which they had formerly set forth a comfortable board, and the ornaments which they had worn in happier days. It was a dismal thing to see men pale with anxiety pressing through crowds who were on the same miserable errand, and women weeping as they offered their little treasure to the scales. Persons who had lived in plenty and respectability were seen publicly asking alms ... for thousands were at once reduced to the alternative of begging or stealing; and women, of unblemished virtue till this fatal season, walked the streets, offering themselves to prostitution, that the mother might obtain bread for her hungry children, ...