That England possessed the troops and that they were wanted by Wellington is undeniable. Even in September there were still between fifty and sixty thousand soldiers present under arms at home, and that any additional force could have been fed in Portugal is equally beyond doubt, because the reserve magazines contained provisions for one hundred thousand men for nine months. The only question then was the possibility of procuring enough of specie to purchase those supplies which could not be had on credit. Lord Wellington had indeed made the campaign almost without specie, and a small additional force would certainly not have overwhelmed his resources; but setting this argument aside, what efforts, what ability, what order, what arrangements were made by the government to overcome the difficulties of the time? Was there less extravagance in the public offices, the public works, public salaries, public contracts? The very snuff-boxes and services of plate given to diplomatists, the gorgeous furniture of palaces, nay the gaudy trappings wasted on Whittingham’s, Roche’s, and Downie’s divisions, would almost have furnished the wants of the additional troops demanded by lord Wellesley. Where were all the millions lavished in subsidies to the Spaniards, where the millions which South America had transmitted to Cadiz, where those sums spent by the soldiers during the war? Real money had indeed nearly disappeared from England, and a base paper had usurped its place; but gold had not disappeared from the world, and an able ministry would have found it. These men only knew how to squander. [Sidenote: Stuart’s Correspondence, MSS.] The subsidy granted to Portugal was paid by the commercial speculation of lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart, speculations which also fed the army, saved the whole population of Portugal from famine, and prevented the war from stopping in 1811; and yet so little were the ministers capable even of understanding, much less of making such arrangements, that they now rebuked their general for having adopted them and after their own imbecile manner insisted upon a new mode of providing supplies. Every movement they made proved their incapacity. They had permitted lord William Bentinck to engage in the scheme of invading Italy when additional troops were wanted in Portugal; and they suffered him to bid, in the money-market, against lord Wellington, and thus sweep away two millions of dollars at an exorbitant premium, for a chimera, when the war in the Peninsula was upon the point of stopping altogether in default of that very money which Wellington could have otherwise procured—nay, had actually been promised at a reasonable cost. Nor was this the full measure of their folly.