The people were oppressed with imposts, legal and illegal, and yet the defalcation in the revenue was great, and the monopoly of tobacco the principal financial resource, was injured by the smuggling arising from the unsettled nature of the times. The annual charge on the province was about £1,300,000, the actual receipts were less than £500,000, and the junta endeavoured to supply the deficiency by an extraordinary contribution from all property, save that of day-labourers, which they expected would produce sixty millions of reals (£750,000). But a corrupt and vexatious collection of this tax tormented the people without filling the treasury; the clergy, and the richer classes, were, as in Portugal, favoured, and it yielded, in six months, less than a seventh part. From this state of affairs two inferences may be safely drawn:—1º. That England and not Gallicia had hitherto supported the war here, as in other parts of the Peninsula. 2º. That as England had in 1808-9 paid to Gallicia three millions of hard dollars, and given other succours sufficient for double the number of troops employed, the deficiency of the revenue had been amply compensated, and the causes of distress must be sought for in the proceedings of the authorities, and in the anomalous nature of the war itself. The successive juntas, apprehensive of offending the people, were always inert in the civil administration, and either too corrupt, or too incapable, to apply the succours from England, justly or wisely. The junta of this period was, like its predecessors, factious and intriguing; it was hostile to the junta of Leon, unfriendly to that of Asturias, jealous and contemptuous of the military leaders; in return these last abhorred the junta, and were tormented with factions of their own. The regular officers hated the guerillas, and endeavoured to get the controul of the succours granted, by England, to the latter; and as they necessarily lived by plundering their own countrymen, they strenuously opposed the arming of the peasants, partly from fear lest the latter should resist this license, partly because the republican, and anti-English spirit, which was growing up in the cortes had also reached this quarter.