But the proofs of corruption and incapacity in the junta are innumerable, and not confined to the records of events kept by British officers. Romana, a few months later, upon the question of appointing a regency, thus describes their conduct: “He himself,” he said, “had doubted if the central junta was a lawful government, and this doubt was general in the provinces through which he had passed; yet he had, to preserve the nation from anarchy, not only yielded obedience to it, but he had, likewise, forced the provinces of Gallicia, Leon, and Asturias to do the same; because he thought that an illegal government might be useful if it deserved the confidence of the people, and that they respected its authority. The central junta, however, was not thus situated: the people, judging of measures by their effects, complained that the armies were weak, the government without energy; that there were no supplies; that the promised accounts of the public expenditure were withheld; and yet, all the sums drawn from America, all the succours granted by England, the rents of the crown, and the voluntary contributions were expended. The public employments were not given to men of merit and true lovers of their country. Some of the members of the junta rendered their power subservient to their own advantage; others conferred lucrative appointments on their relations and dependents. Ecclesiastical offices had been filled up to enable individuals to seize those rents for themselves which ought to be appropriated for the public service. There was no unity to be found: many of the junta cared only for the interest of their particular province, as if they were not members of the Spanish monarchy; confirming the appointments of the local juntas, without regard to fitness; and even assigning recompenses to men destitute of military knowledge, who had neither seen service nor performed the duties assigned to them.” “The junta, divided into sections, undertook to manage affairs in which they were unversed, and which were altogether foreign to their professions. Horses, taken from their owners under pretence of supplying the armies, were left to die of hunger in the sea-marshes: and, finally, many important branches of administration were in the hands of men, suspected, both from their own conduct and from their having been creatures of that infamous favourite who was the author of the general misery.” It was at this period that the celebrated _Partidas_ first commenced the _guerilla_, or petty warfare, which has been so lauded, as if that had been the cause of Napoleon’s discomfiture. Those bands were infinitely numerous, because, every robber, that feared a jail, or that could break from one; every smuggler,[8] whose trade had been interrupted; every friar, disliking the trammels of his convent; and every idler, that wished to avoid the ranks of the regular army, was to be found either as chief or associate in the _partidas_.