“He had hoped,” he resumed in another letter, “that the Portuguese government was satisfied with his acts, and that instead of endeavouring to render all defence useless by disturbing the minds of the populace at Lisbon, they would have adopted measures to secure the tranquillity of that capital. But, like other weak individuals, they added duplicity to weakness, and their past expressions of approbation and gratitude he supposed were intended to convey censure. All he asked from them was to preserve tranquillity, to provide food for their own troops while employed in the Lines, and to be prepared, in case of disaster, to save those persons and their families who were obnoxious to the enemy.” “I have,” he said “little doubt of final success, but _I have fought a sufficient number of battles to know, that the result of any is not certain, even with the best arrangements_.” These reproaches were neither too severe nor ill-timed, for the war had been hanging in even balance, and the weight of interested folly thus thrown in by the Regency, was beginning to sink the scale. Yet to shew the justice of lord Wellington’s complaints, it is necessary to resume the thread of those intrigues which have been before touched upon. [Sidenote: Appendix No. V. Section 8.] Instead of performing their own duties, the government assumed, that the struggle could be maintained on the frontier, and when they should have been removing the people and the provisions from the line of retreat, they were discussing the expediency of military operations which were quite impracticable. When convinced of their error by facts, they threw the burthen of driving the country upon the general, although they knew that he was ignorant even of the names and places of abode of those officers and magistrates who were to execute it, and that there was but one Portuguese agent at head-quarters to give assistance in translating the necessary orders. When this was remarked to them, they issued the orders themselves, but made the execution referable to the general, without his knowledge, and well knowing that he had no means of communicating with the country people, and this at the very moment of the enemy’s advance. The battle of Busaco, by delaying the French army, alone enabled the orders even to reach the persons to whom they were addressed. But it was the object of the Regency, by nourishing and soothing the national indolence, to throw the odium of harsh and rigorous measures upon the British authorities. Lord Wellington, however, while he reproached them for this conduct, never shrunk from the odium; he avowed himself, in his proclamations, the author of the plan for wasting the country, and he was willing the Regency should shelter themselves under his name, but he was not willing to lose the fruit of his responsibility, or, that those whose courage did shrink from the trial, “should seek popularity with the populace at the expense of the best interests of the country.”