Amongst the other follies of the Portuguese regency was a resolution to issue proclamations, filled with bombastic adulation of themselves, vulgar abuse of the French, and altogether unsuited to the object of raising the public feeling, which flagged under their system. To the English general’s remonstrances on this head, Forjas replied, that praise of themselves and abuse of the French, was the national custom, and could not be dispensed with! a circumstance which certain English writers who have implicitly followed the accounts of the Portuguese authors, such as Accursio de Neves, and men of his stamp, relative to French enormities, would do well to consider. And here it is right to observe, that so many complaints were made of the cruelty committed by Massena’s army while at Santarem, that lord Wellington had some thoughts of reprisals; but having first caused strict inquiry to be made, it was discovered that in most cases, the _ordenança_, after having submitted to the French, and received their protection, took advantage of it to destroy the stragglers and small detachments, and the cruelty complained of was only the infliction of legitimate punishment for such conduct: the projected retaliation was therefore changed for an injunction to the _ordenanças_ to cease from such a warfare. The character of the regency was, however, most openly shewn in their proceedings connected with the convention of Cintra. All the advantages which that treaty ensured to Portugal, they complacently reaped, but overlooked or annulled those points in which the character of England was concerned. In violation of the convention, and in despite of the remonstrances of lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart, they cast the French residents at Lisbon into loathsome dungeons, without any cause of complaint; and in the affair of Mascarheñas their conduct was distinguished alike by wanton cruelty and useless treachery. This youth, when only fifteen, had with many others entered the French service in Junot’s time, under the permission of his own prince; and he and the Conde de Sabugal, were taken by the peasantry in 1810 endeavouring to pass from Massena’s army into Spain, Sabugal in uniform, Mascarheñas in disguise. They were both tried as traitors. The first, a general officer, and with powerful friends amongst the Fidalgos, was acquitted, as indeed was only just; but he was then appointed to a situation under the regency, which was disgraceful, as arising from faction: Mascarheñas was a boy, and had no powerful friends, and he was condemned to death. Lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart represented the injustice of this sentence, and they desired that if humanity was unheeded the government would put him to death as a spy, for being in disguise, and so prevent the danger of reprisals, already threatened by Massena. The young man’s mother and sisters, grovelling in the dust, implored the regency to spare him, but to shew their hatred of lord Wellington and Mr.