These matters were sufficiently vexatious and alarming, but what made him tremble, was, the course, which the misconduct of the Portuguese government, and the incapacity of the English cabinet, had forced upon the native furnishers of the supplies. Those persons, coming in the winter to Lisbon to have their bills on the military chest paid, could get no money, and in their distress had sold the bills to speculators, the Portuguese holders, at a discount of fifteen, the Spanish holders at a discount of forty in the hundred. The credit of the chest immediately fell, prices rose in proportion, and as no military enterprize could carry the army beyond the flight of this harpy, and no revenues could satisfy its craving, the contest must have ceased, if Mr. Stuart had not found a momentary and partial remedy, by publicly guaranteeing the payment of the bills and granting interest until they could be taken up. The expense was thus augmented, but the increase fell far short of the enhanced cost of the supplies which had already resulted even from this restricted practice of the bill-holders, and of two evils the least was chosen. It may seem strange that such transactions should belong to the history of the military operations in the Peninsula, that it should be the general’s instead of the minister’s task, to encounter such evils, and to find the remedy. Such however was the nature of the war, and no adequate notion of lord Wellington’s vigorous capacity and Herculean labours can be formed, without an intimate knowledge of the financial and political difficulties which oppressed him, and of which this work has necessarily only given an outline.