There were parts of the country where the people, having no other sustenance, allayed the pain of emptiness without supplying the wants of nature, by eating boiled grass, which they seasoned, such as could, with the brine and scales left in the baskets from which salt fish, or sardinhas had been sold, these being at that time the scarce and almost only remaining articles of food. Among a people in this extreme distress, the commissioners had the painful task of selecting the cases which could bear no deferment of relief, when every case was urgent, when multitudes were perishing for want, and when the whole amount of the means of relief at their disposal, economized as those means were to the utmost, was deplorably inadequate to the just and pressing claims upon it. Eighteen months after the retreat, the price of provisions in the wasted provinces was about six times higher than before the invasion; a fact from which some conception may be formed of the misery endured in the course of those months, and of the state of things when the commissioners entered upon their arduous and painful task. Inadequate to this dreadful necessity as the aid of England was, yet, while it is to be feared a greater number perished for want of human, or of timely help, 43,000 sick and 8000 orphans were saved by it. The relief was not bestowed in food alone, and in the means of removal, but in the means of future subsistence ... cows, oxen, implements of agriculture, and seed of various kinds. The gratitude of the people, to their honour it should be said, was more in proportion to the intention and good-will which were thus manifested, than to the actual relief which was afforded. And if in Portugal, as there would have been in any other country, men were found whose hearts were so hard and their consciences so stupified that they sought only how to make the necessities and miseries of their fellow-creatures an occasion of lucre for themselves, it may safely be asserted, that never in any public calamity was there less of such wicked selfishness displayed than at this time. The commissioners who were employed ten months upon this service, (which was not less hazardous than painful, for it exposed them continually to contagious disease as well as to the constant sight of suffering), performed their office gratuitously, and would not consent to have their personal expenses reimbursed: the secretary and assistants who always accompanied them refused to accept any pecuniary recompense for their time and labour: and the house of the Vanzellers of Porto advanced money for purchasing great part of the cattle, and would receive no commission whatever upon the negociation and payment of the bills. A brother of that house, while the allied army occupied the lines, received under his own roof at Lisbon, and at his own cost maintained more than forty refugees, who were all personally unknown to him before that time: and at his