To obtain this encouragement, Raymundo, the old tool of the party in the Oporto violences, was sent to the court of Rio Janeiro, to excite the prince regent against lord Wellington; and the Patriarch himself wrote to the prince of Wales and to the duke of Sussex, thinking to incense them also against the English general. The extent and nature of the intrigues may be estimated from a revelation made at the time by baron Eben, and by the editor of a Lisbon newspaper, called the _Brazilienza_. Those persons abandoning the faction, asserted that the Patriarch, the Souzas, and (while he remained in Portugal) the ex-plenipotentiary, Mr. Villiers, were personally opposed to lord Wellington, marshal Beresford, and Mr. de Forjas, and had sought to remove them from their situations, and to get the duke of Brunswick appointed generallissimo in Portugal; that they had also endeavoured to engage the duke of Sussex to take a leading part, but that his royal highness had repulsed them at the outset; that their plan was to engage a newspaper to be their organ in London, as the _Brazilienza_ was to have been in Lisbon; that in their correspondence lord Wellington was designated under the name of _Alberoni_; lord Wellesley, _Lama_; Beresford, _Ferugem_; Mr. Stuart, _Labre_; the Patriarch, _Saxe_; Antonio Souza, _Lamberti_; colonel Bunbury and Mr. Peel, then under secretaries of state, as _Thin_ and _By-Thin_. That after Mr. Villier’s departure, the intrigue was continued by the Patriarch and the Souzas, but upon a different plan; for, overborne by the vigour of Mr. Stuart in the council, they agreed to refrain from openly opposing either him or Forjas, but resolved to write down what either might utter, and transmit, that which suited their purpose, to the Conde de Linhares and the chevalier Souza; these persons undertaking to represent the information so received, after their own fashion, to the cabinets of St. James’ and Rio Janeiro. The violent temper of the Patriarch unfitted him to execute this plan; he made open display of his hostility to the English general; and it is worthy of observation that, while thus thwarting every measure necessary to resist the enemy, his faction did not hesitate to exercise the most odious injustice and cruelty against those whom they denominated well-wishers to the French. By a decree of the prince regent’s, dated the 20th of March, 1809, private denunciations in cases of disaffection, were permitted, the informer’s name to be kept secret; and in September, 1810, this infamous system, although strenuously opposed by Mr. Stuart, was acted upon, and many persons suddenly sent to the islands, and others thrown into dungeons. Some might have been guilty; and the government pretended that a traitorous correspondence with the enemy was carried on through a London house, which they indicated; but it does not appear that a direct crime was brought home to any, and it is certain that many innocent persons were oppressed.