The edict for the discovery and confiscation of English property and goods had produced little effect. The three days allowed for sending in the returns having elapsed, the term was prolonged for eight days more, with heavy denunciations against those who should attempt to evade it. That part of the edict which related to English property might easily be obeyed by those who chose to obey it; but the confiscation of all English goods in a city where half the goods were English, was as impracticable as it was oppressive; and the day after Junot had issued his second decree upon this subject, he found it necessary to publish a third, modifying the former two, and in fact confessing their absurdity. It appeared, he said, that under these decrees the merchants and shopkeepers could not dispose of many articles of British manufacture; that the want of these articles kept out of the market a great number of things which were in daily use, ♦DEC. 19. OBS. PORT. P. 50.♦ and would raise the prices of those which were not prohibited: such articles, therefore, as were not actually the property of British subjects, might be sold, on condition that the owners gave in an account of the British goods in their possession, and obtained permission to sell them from the commissary at Lisbon, or some public functionary in the provinces; that this permission should not be granted unless the kind, quality, measure, quantity, and price of the articles for sale were specified; that the vendor should hold himself responsible for the amount of all which he disposed of, and should for that purpose enter in his books the quantity of the thing sold, the price, and the name of the purchaser; and give security for this if it were required. ♦SCARCITY OF CORN APPREHENDED.♦