Over the method of levying troops Marshal Beresford had no control. But the hospitals, which were infinitely more destructive to the army than the sword of the enemy, and would have destroyed it much faster than it could have been recruited, were greatly improved under a British inspector, though the government would not permit his regulations to be carried into effect to their full extent. Still a great and material improvement was accomplished. The commissariat had been so conducted, as to be at once inefficient for the army, and oppressive for the people. A board of administration at Lisbon had its intendants in every province, and its factors in every town. Government contracted for provisions and forage, at fixed prices, with the board, and the board directed its agents to purchase what might be required for the troops on the spot. Payment was made by bills upon the board, which in the best times were seldom taken up till twelve months after they became due, and in the present state of things were considered to be worth nothing. The farmer, therefore, naturally concealed his grain; it was seldom that magazines were formed, or any provision made against scarcity; and what the farmer could not or would not sell at the disadvantageous rate which the factors offered, was usually taken, when it could be found, by force. Marshal Beresford got commissaries appointed to the different brigades, but he could not get money for them, and therefore they were of little use. To reform the civil establishments of the army was almost as difficult as it would have been to reform the government; the utmost exertions of the Marshal, aided as they were by Lord Wellington’s interference, availed nothing, ... being opposed by every species of low cunning and court intrigue. For the old corruptions existed in full vigour, notwithstanding the removal of the court to Brazil; and the body politic continued to suffer under its inveterate disease, a _morbus pediculosus_, from which nothing but a system of reform, wisely, temperately, firmly, and constitutionally pursued, could purify it, and restore it to health and strength. Much, however, was done for Portugal, ... enough to be ever remembered by that country with gratitude, and by Great Britain with a generous and ennobling pride. An English commissariat, scrupulously exact in all its dealings, relieved the farmers in great measure from the oppression of their own government. The soldiers learnt to respect their officers and themselves; they rapidly improved in discipline; they acquired confidence, and became proud of their profession. The government itself found it necessary to alter its old system of secrecy and delusion; the dispatches of Lord Wellington and Marshal Beresford were published in the Lisbon Gazette, and the people of Portugal were officially informed of the real circumstances of the war, as fairly and as fully as they had been in the War of the Acclamation. CHAPTER XXX.