It was objected that the brigades incorporated with the British divisions were fed by the British commissariat the cost being deducted from the subsidy, an advantage the loss of which the Portuguese could not sustain. Forjas rejoined that they could feed their own troops cheaper if the subsidy was paid in money, but Beresford referred him to his scanty means of transport, so scanty that the few stores they were then bound to furnish for the unattached brigades depending upon the Portuguese commissariat were not forwarded. Foiled on this point Forjas proposed gradually to withdraw the best brigades from the English divisions, to incorporate them with the unattached brigades of native troops and so form an auxiliary corps; but the same objection of transport still applied and this matter dropped for the moment. The regency then agreed to reduce the legal age of men liable to the conscription for the army, but the islands, which ought to have given three hundred men yearly, were exempt from their controul, and the governors supported by the prince-regent refused to permit any levies in their jurisdictions, and even granted asylums to all those who wished to avoid the levy in Portugal. In the islands also the persons so unjustly and cruelly imprisoned in 1810 were still kept in durance, although the regency yielding to the persevering remonstrances of Mr. Stuart and lord Wellington had released those at Lisbon. Soon after this Beresford desired to go to England, and the occasion was seized by Forjas to renew his complaints and his proposition for a separate army which he designed to command himself. General Sylveira’s claim to that honour was however supported by the Souzas, to whose faction he belonged, and the only matter in which all agreed was the display of ill-will towards England. Lord Wellington became indignant. The English newspapers, he said, did much mischief by their assertions, but he never suspected they could by their omissions alienate the Portuguese nation and government. The latter complained that their troops were not praised in parliament, nothing could be more different from a debate within the house than the representation of it in the newspapers. The latter seldom stated an event or transaction as it really occurred, unless when they absolutely copied what was written for them; and even then their observations branched out so far from the text, that they appeared absolutely incapable of understanding much less of stating the truth upon any subject. The Portuguese people should therefore be cautious of taking English newspapers as a test of the estimation in which the Portuguese army was held in England, where its character stood high and was rising daily. “Mr. Forjas is,” said lord Wellington, “the ablest man of business I have met with in the Peninsula, it is to be hoped he will not on such grounds have the folly to alter a successful military system. I understand something of the