Prone as the Spaniards were in these unhappy times to suspect any person, and to act upon the slightest suspicion, they were slow in believing that Morla had proved false. The people of Cadiz would hardly be convinced that their governor, whose patriotic addresses were still circulating among them, could possibly have gone over to the Intruder. So many measures of utility, so many acts of patriotism and of disinterested vigilance in his administration, were remembered, that the first reports of his perfidy were indignantly received; a fact so contrary to all their experience was not to be credited, and they felt as if they injured him in listening to such an accusation. He had established among them a reputation like that which a Cadi sometimes enjoys in Mahommedan countries, where his individual uprightness supplies the defects of law, and resists the general corruption of manners. A peasant, whom he had acquitted upon some criminal charge, brought him a number of turkeys, as a present in gratitude for his acquittal. Morla put him in prison, consigned the turkeys to the gaoler for his food, and set him at liberty when he had eaten them all. There was neither law, equity, nor humanity in this, ... yet it had an extravagant, oriental ostentation of justice, well calculated to impress the people with an opinion of his nice honour and scrupulous integrity. But this man, who in all his public writings boasted of his frankness and of his honourable intentions, was in reality destitute both of truth and honour; and the revolution, which developed some characters and corrupted others, only unmasked his. Early in these troubles Lord Collingwood and Sir Hew Dalrymple had discovered ♦PROOFS OF HIS PRIOR TREACHERY.♦ his duplicity. He had signed, and was believed to have written, Solano’s ill-timed and worse-intended proclamation, in which the English were spoken of with unqualified reprobation, and as the real enemies against whom all true Spaniards ought to unite; and when warned by Solano’s fate, he joined in the national cause, the desire of injuring that cause by every possible means seems to have been the main object of his crooked policy. When Castaños wanted the assistance of General Spencer’s corps, he threw out hints to that General that it would be required for the defence of Cadiz; though, from jealousy of the English, at that very time he prevented the Junta from bringing the garrison of Ceuta into the field, and had given it as his decided opinion that no English troops should be admitted into any Spanish fortress. And while he endeavoured to make the Junta of Seville suspicious of English interference, he recommended to the accredited agents of England, that they should interfere early and decidedly in forming a central government, and appointing a commander-in-chief, and that their influence should be strengthened by marching an army into Spain. ♦MORLA’S LETTER TO THE CENTRAL JUNTA;♦