Lord Wellesley affirmed, and they were unable to deny the fact, that dollars might have been obtained from South America to any amount, if the government would have consented to pay the market-price for them; they would not do it, and yet afterwards sought to purchase the same dollars at a higher rate in the European markets. He told them, and they could not deny it, that they had empowered five different agents, to purchase dollars for five different services, without any controlling head; that these independent agents were bidding against each other in every money-market, and the restrictions as to the price were exactly in the inverse proportion to the importance of the service: the agent for the troops in Malta was permitted to offer the highest price, lord Wellington was restricted to the lowest. And besides this folly lord Wellesley shewed that they had, under their licensing system, permitted French vessels to bring French goods, silks and gloves, to England, and to carry bullion away in return. Napoleon thus paid his army in Spain with the very coin which should have subsisted the English troops. Incapable however as the ministers were of making the simplest arrangements; neglecting, as they did, the most obvious means of supplying the wants of the army; incapable even, as we have seen, of sending out a few bales of clothing and arms for the Spaniards without producing the utmost confusion, they were heedless of the counsels of their general, prompt to listen to every intriguing adviser, and ready to plunge into the most absurd and complicated measures, to relieve that distress which their own want of ability had produced. When the war with the United States broke out, a war provoked by themselves, they suffered the Admiralty, contrary to the wishes of Mr. Stuart, to reduce the naval force at Lisbon, and to neglect Wellington’s express recommendation as to the stationing of ships for the protection of the merchantmen bringing flour and stores to Portugal. Thus the American privateers, being unmolested, run down the coast of Africa, intercepted the provision trade from the Brazils, which was one of the principal resources of the army, and then, emboldened by impunity, infested the coast of Portugal, captured fourteen ships loaded with flour off the Douro, and a large vessel in the very mouth of the Tagus. These things happened also when the ministers were censuring and interfering with the general’s commercial transactions, and seeking to throw the feeding of his soldiers into the hands of British speculators; as if the supply of an army was like that of a common market! never considering that they thus made it the merchant’s interest to starve the troops with a view to increase profits; never considering that it was by that very commerce, which they were putting an end to, that the general had paid the Portuguese subsidy for them, and had furnished his own military chest with specie, when their administrative capacity was