The spirit of the people, without which all other means of defence must have been ineffectual, was what England could neither give nor take away; but for the measures by which that spirit was so directed as to secure its end, Portugal was indebted to British councils. Military and financial resources, of which the nation had not supposed itself capable, were called forth; and the Portugueze were addressed by their rulers in language to which they had long been unaccustomed, ... the language of hope and confidence, and of conscious rectitude as well as conscious strength. Like the Supreme Junta, the regents reminded the Portugueze of their heroic ancestors; they spake of the wickedness of the enemy, the inexpressible miseries which would accompany their yoke, and the certainty of glorious success, if those exertions and sacrifices were made which the emergency required; but the Portugueze regency did not, like the Spaniards, speak to the people of the causes which had rendered this invasion possible, and produced the decay of Portugal; nor did they hold out the promise of the restoration of their rights, the redress of their grievances, and the due execution of their laws. Such promises were not necessary as excitement; a people who were literally defending their hearths and altars, and fighting to save their wives and daughters from violation and butchery, or to revenge them, needed no additional feeling to goad them on: ... as pledges they were not held out; because the government had not the prudence to think of reforming itself. In providing for the defence of the country, it acted providently and bravely, with wisdom and with vigour; but in other things, the old leaven discovered itself, and made it apparent that the pleasure of the minister was still the law of Portugal. A decree was published, assigning to the widows, children, or dependent brethren of those who had fallen at Almeida, the full pay of the deceased, and half pay to the families of those who were made prisoners. “The Prince,” it said, “would not believe that any of his faithful vassals could have entered the service of the enemy; and if any had been compelled to do so, he trusted they had only yielded to compulsion, with the purpose of effecting their escape. He suspended, therefore, his justice; but if a month elapsed before such persons acquitted themselves by appearing, they would be considered as traitors.” Now, the treason of the lieutenant-governor and the major of artillery was open and undoubted: Lord Wellington had stated it in his dispatches to the minister at war; their names were given in those dispatches here in England, but suppressed in Portugal, out of favour to their connexions. ♦ARBITRARY ARRESTS AT LISBON.♦