In 1812, this paper sunk twenty per cent., from the sordid practices of English mercantile houses whose agents secretly depreciated its credit and then purchased it; and in this dishonesty they were aided by some of the commissariat, notwithstanding the vigilant probity of the chief commissary. Sums, as low as ten pence, payable in Lisbon, I have myself seen in the hands of poor country people on the frontiers. By these infamous proceedings the poorer dealers were ruined or forced to raise their prices, which hurt their sales and contracted the markets to the detriment of the soldiers; and there was much danger, that the people generally, would thus discover the mode of getting cash for bills by submitting to high discounts, which would soon have rendered the contest too costly to continue. But the resources of lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart were not exhausted. They contrived to preserve the neutrality of Portugal, and by means of licenses continued to have importations of American flour, until the end of the war; a very fine stroke of policy, for this flour was paid for with English goods, and resold at a considerable profit for specie which went to the military chest. They were less successful in supporting the credit of the Portuguese government paper; bad faith, and the necessities of the native commissariat, which now caused an extraordinary issue, combined to lower its credit. The conde de Funchal, Mr. Villiers, and Mr. Vansittart proposed a bank, and other schemes, such as a loan of one million and a half from the English treasury, which shall be treated more at length in another place. But lord Wellington ridiculing the fallacy of a government, with revenues unequal to its expenditure, borrowing from a government which was unable to find specie sufficient to sustain the war, remarked, that the money could not be realised in the Portuguese treasury, or it must be realised at the expense of a military chest, whose hollow sound already mocked the soldiers’ shout of victory. Again therefore he demanded the reform of abuses, and offered to take all the responsibility and odium upon himself, certain that the exigences of the war could be thus met, and the most vexatious imposts upon the poor abolished; neither did he fail to point out in detail the grounds of this conviction. His reasoning made as little impression upon Funchal, as it had done upon Linhares; money was no where to be had, and the general, after being forced to become a trader himself, now tolerated, for the sake of the resources it furnished, a contraband commerce, which he discovered Soult to have established with English merchants at Lisbon, exchanging the quicksilver of Almaden for colonial produce; and he was still to find in his own personal resources, the means of beating the enemy, in despite of the matchless follies of the governments he served. He did so, but complained that it was a hard task. BOOK XVIII. CHAPTER I. [Sidenote: 1812. May.]