In the Madeiras the authorities vexatiously prevented the English money agents from exporting specie, and their conduct was approved of at Rio Janeiro. At Bisao, in Africa, the troops had mutinied for want of pay, and in the Cape de Verde Islands disturbances arose from the over-exaction of taxes; for when the people were weak, the regency were vigorous; pliant only to the powerful. These commotions were trifling and soon ended of themselves, yet expeditions were sent against the offenders in both places, and the troops thus employed immediately committed far worse excesses, and did more mischief than that which they were sent to suppress. At the same time several French frigates finding the coast of Africa unguarded, cruized successfully against the Brazil trade, and aided the American privateers to contract the already too straitened resources of the army. Amidst all these difficulties however the extraordinary exertions of the British officers had restored the numbers, discipline, and spirit of the Portuguese army. Twenty-seven thousand excellent soldiers were again under arms and ready to commence the campaign, although the national discontent was daily increasing; and indeed the very feeling of security created by the appearance of such an army rendered the citizens at large less willing to bear the inconveniences of the war. Distant danger never affects the multitude, and the billetting of troops, who, from long habits of war, little regarded the rights of the citizens in comparison with their own necessities, being combined with requisitions, and with a recruiting system becoming every year more irksome, formed an aggregate of inconveniences intolerable to men who desired ease and no longer dreaded to find an enemy on their hearth-stones. The powerful classes were naturally more affected than the poorer classes, because of their indolent habits; but their impatience was aggravated because they had generally been debarred of the highest situations, or supplanted, by the British interference in the affairs of the country, and, unlike those of Spain, the nobles of Portugal had lost little or none of their hereditary influence. Discontent was thus extended widely, and moreover the old dread of French power was entirely gone; unlimited confidence in the strength and resources of England had succeeded; and this confidence, to use the words of Mr. Stuart, “being opposed to the irregularities which have been practised by individuals, and to the difference of manners, and of religion, placed the British in the singular position of a class whose exertions were necessary for the country, but who, for the above reasons, were in every other respect as distinct from the natives as persons with whom, from some criminal cause, it was necessary to suspend communication.”—Hence he judged that the return of the prince-regent would be a proper epoch for the British to retire from all situations in Portugal not strictly military, for