the restoration, no
crime that I know of has been punished in either, excepting that of
being a French partisan. Those malversations in office--those neglects
of duty; the disobedience of orders; the inattention to regulation,
which tend to defeat all plans for military operation, and ruin a state
that is involved in war, more certainly than the plots of all the French
partisans, are passed unnoticed; and, notwithstanding the numerous
complaints which Marshal Beresford and I have made, I do not know that
one individual has yet been punished, or even dismissed from his
office. The cause of this evil is the mistaken principle on which the
government have proceeded. They have imagined that the best foundation
for their power was a low, vulgar popularity; the evidence is the shouts
of the mob of Lisbon, and the regular attendance at their levees, and
the bows and scrapes of people in office, who ought to have other modes
of spending their time; and to obtain this babble the government of
Portugal, as well as the successive governments in Spain, have neglected
to perform those essential duties of all governments, viz., to force
those they are placed over to do their duty, by which, before this time,
these countries would have been out of danger.

The other evil is connected very materially with the first. The
government will not regulate their finances, because it will interfere
with some man's job. They will not lay on new taxes, because in all
countries those who lay on taxes are not favourites with the mob. They
have a general income-tax, called 10 per cent., and, in some cases, 20
per cent., which they have regulated in such a manner as that no
individual, I believe, has paid a hundredth part of what he ought to
have paid. Then, for want of money, they can pay nobody, and, of course,
have not the influence which they ought to have over the subordinate
departments.

In addition to embarrassments of all descriptions surrounding us on all
sides, I have to contend with an ancient enmity between these two
nations, which is more like that of cat and dog than anything else, of
which no sense of common danger, or common interest, or anything, can
get the better, even in individuals.

_June 12, 1811._

To write an anonymous letter is the meanest action of which any man can
be guilty.

_Dispatch, July 3, 1811._

* * * * *

_British Officers, as well at Soldiers, require to be kept in order.