Again the junta pretended that they desired the deliverance of Portugal to enable them to unite with the southern provinces in a general effort; but Mr. Stuart’s letters prove that they would never unite at all with any other province, and that their aim was to separate from Spain altogether and join Portugal. Their wish to avoid personal inconvenience was notorious, it was the cause of their refusal to let sir David Baird’s troops disembark, it was apparent to all who had to deal with them, and it belongs to the national character. Then their eagerness to obtain money, and their unpatriotic use of it when obtained, has been so amply set forth in various parts of my history that I need not do more than refer to that, and to my quoted authorities, especially in the second chapters of the 3d and 14th Books. Moreover the reviewer’s quotations belie his comments, and like the slow-worm defined by Johnson “a blind worm, a large viper, _venomous_, _not mortal_,” he is at once dull and malignant. The junta told sir Arthur Wellesley that ten thousand Portuguese troops were at Oporto, and that two thousand Spaniards, who had marched the 15th, would be there on the 25th of July; yet when sir Arthur arrived at Oporto, on the 25th, he found only fifteen hundred Portuguese and three hundred Spaniards; the two thousand men said to be in march had never moved and were not expected. Here then instead of twelve thousand men, there were only eighteen hundred! At Coimbra indeed eighty miles from Oporto, there were five thousand militia and regulars, one-third of which were unarmed, and according to colonel Browne’s letter, as given in the folio edition of the inquiry upon the Cintra convention, there were also twelve hundred armed peasants which the reviewer has magnified into twelve thousand. Thus without dwelling on the difference of place, the difference between the true numbers and the statements of the Gallician junta, was four thousand; nor will it mend the matter if we admit the armed peasants to be twelve thousand, for that would make a greater difference on the other side. The junta estimated the French at fifteen thousand men, but the embarkation returns of the number shipped after the convention gave twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty, making a difference of more than ten thousand men, exclusive of those who had fallen or been captured in the battles of Vimiero and Roliça, and of those who had died in hospital! Have I not a right to treat these as inaccurate statements; and the reviewer’s remark as an impertinence?