The British army was, they said, an auxiliary force, and should only act as such; nevertheless it had assumed the right of treating with the French for Portuguese interests. A convention had been concluded which protected the enemy from the punishment due to his rapine and cruelty. It was more favourable than the strength of the relative parties warranted; no notice had been taken of the Portuguese government, or of the native army in the Alemtejo. Men who were obnoxious to their countrymen for having aided the invaders were protected from a just vengeance, and finally the fortresses were bargained for, as acquisitions appertaining to the British army; a circumstance which must inevitably excite great jealousy both in Portugal and Spain, and injure the general cause, by affording an opportunity for the French emissaries to create disunion among the allied nations. They dwelt upon the importance of the native forces, the strength of the insurrection, and insinuated that separate operations were likely to be carried on notwithstanding the treaty. Noble words often cover pitiful deeds: this remonstrance, apparently springing from the feelings of a patriot whose heart was ulcerated by the wrongs his country had sustained, was but a cloak for a miserable interested intrigue. The bishop of Oporto, a meddling ambitious priest, had early conceived the project of placing himself at the head of the insurrectional authorities, and transferring the seat of government from Lisbon to Oporto. He was aware that he should encounter great opposition, and he hoped that by inveigling the English general to countenance these pretensions, he might, with the aid of Freire’s force and his own influence, succeed in the object of his wishes. With this view he wrote a letter to sir Charles Cotton, dated the 4th of August, in which was enclosed (as the letter describes it) “The form of government with which they (the junta of Oporto) meant to govern Portugal when the city of Lisbon should be free from the French.” This letter, together with its enclosure, being transmitted to sir Arthur Wellesley, he placed them among other public documents in the hands of sir Hew Dalrymple when the latter first landed at Maceira. In the document itself it was declared that “The body of government had taken the glorious resolution of restoring the Portuguese monarchy in all its extent, and of restoring the crown of Portugal to its lawful sovereign, don Juan VI., their prince, who was actually living in his estates of Brazil;” but this “glorious resolution” was burthened with many forms and restrictions; and although the junta professed the intention of restoring a regency, they provided, “that if this new regency should be interrupted by a new invasion of the French, (which God forbid!) or by _any other thing_, this government will immediately take the government on themselves, and exercise the authority and jurisdiction which it has done ever since its institution.”