The commercial treaty, and the proceedings of the Oporto wine company, an oppressive corporation unfair in all its dealings, irresponsible, established in violation of that treaty, and supported without regard either to the interests of the prince regent or his British allies, furnished them with continual subjects for disputes, and nothing was too absurd or too gross for their interference. Under the management of Mr. Stuart who had vigorously enforced Wellington’s plans, their paper money had obtained a reasonable and encreasing circulation, and their custom-house resources had encreased, the expenses of their navy and of their arsenal had in some degree been reduced; and it was made evident that an extensive and vigorous application of the same principles would enable them to overcome all their financial difficulties; but there were too many personal interests, too much shameful profit made under the abuses to permit such a reform. The naval establishment instead of being entirely transferred, as Wellington desired, to the Brazils, was continued in the Tagus, and with it the arsenal as its natural appendage. The infamous Junta de Viveres had been suppressed by the prince regent, yet the government under the false pretext of paying its debts still disbursed above ten thousand pounds a month in salaries to men whose offices had been formally abolished. About this time also the opening of the Spanish ports in those provinces from whence the enemy had been driven, deprived Lisbon of a monopoly of trade enjoyed for the last three years, and the regency observing the consequent diminution of revenue, with inexpressible effrontery insisted that the grain, imported by Wellington, by which their army and their nation had been saved from famine, and by which their own subsidy had been provided, should enter the public warehouses under specific regulations and pay duty for so doing. So tenaciously did they hold to this point that Wellington was forced to menace a formal appeal to the English cabinet, for he knew that the subordinate officers of the government, knavish in the extreme, would have sold the secrets of the army magazines to the speculators; and the latter, in whose hands the furnishing of the army would under the new plan of the English ministers be placed, being thus accurately instructed of its resources would have regulated their supplies with great nicety so as to have famished the soldiers, and paralyzed the operations at the greatest possible expense.