The memoir asserted that sir John Moore had been well furnished with money, and that nevertheless the Spaniards would not give him provisions; and this fact was urged as an argument for enforcing requisitions. But the assertion that Moore was furnished with money, which was itself the index to the ministers’ incapacity, Wellington told them was not true. “Moore,” he said, “had been even worse furnished than himself; that general had borrowed a little, a very little money at Salamanca, but he had no regular supply for the military chest until the army had nearly reached Coruña; and the Spaniards were not very wrong in their reluctance to meet his wants, for the debts of his army were still unpaid in the latter end of 1812.” In fine there was no mode by which supplies could be procured from the country without payment on the spot, or soon after the transaction, except by prevailing on the Spanish government to give the English army a part of the government contributions, and a part of the revenues of the royal domains, to be received from the people in kind at a reasonable rate. This had been already done by himself in the province of Salamanca with success, and the same system might be extended to other provinces in proportion as the legitimate government was re-established. But this only met a part of the evil, it would indeed give some supplies, cheaper than they could otherwise be procured, yet they must afterwards be paid for at Cadiz in specie, and thus less money would come into the military chest, which, as before noticed, was only supported by the mercantile speculations of the general. Such were the discussions forced upon Wellington when all his faculties were demanded on the field of battle, and such was the hardiness of his intellect to sustain the additional labour. Such also were the men calling themselves statesmen who then wielded the vast resources of Great Britain. The expenditure of that country for the year 1812, was above one hundred millions, the ministers who controuled it, were yet so ignorant of the elementary principles of finance, as to throw upon their general, even amidst the clangor and tumult of battle, the task of exposing such fallacies. And to reduce these persons from the magnitude of statesmen to their natural smallness of intriguing debaters is called political prejudice! But though power may enable men to trample upon reason for a time with impunity, they cannot escape her ultimate vengeance, she reassumes her sway and history delivers them to the justice of posterity.