History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 5

by William Francis Patrick Napier

But they had proposed also a British security, in jewels, for the capital of their bank, and their reasonings on this head were equally fallacious. This security was to be supported by collecting the duties on wines, exported from Portugal to England, and yet they had not even ascertained whether the existence of these duties was conformable to the treaty with England. Then came the former question. Would Great Britain guarantee the capital of the subscribers whether Portugal was lost or saved? If the country should be lost, the new possessors would understand the levying the duties upon wines as well as the old; would England make her drinkers of port pay two duties, the one for the benefit of the bank capitalists, the other for the benefit of the French conquerors? If all these difficulties could be got over, a bank would be the most efficacious mode in which England could use her credit for the benefit of Portugal; but all the other plans proposed were mere spendthrift schemes to defray the expenses of the war, and if the English government could descend to entertain them they would fail, because the real obstacle, scarcity of specie, would remain.

A nation desirous of establishing public credit should begin, he said, by acquiring a revenue equal to its fixed expenditure, and must manifest an inclination to be honest by performing its engagements with respect to public debts. This maxim he had constantly enforced to the Portuguese government, and if they had minded it, instead of trusting to the fallacious hope of getting loans in England, the deficiency of their revenue would have been made up, without imposing new taxes, and even with the repeal of many which were oppressive and unjust. The fair and honest collection of taxes, which ought to exist, would have been sufficient. For after protracted and unsparing exertions, and by refusing to accept their paper money on any other condition in his commissariat transactions, he had at last forced the Portuguese authorities to pay the interest of that paper and of their exchequer bills, called “Apolocies grandes,” and the effect had been to increase the resources of the government though the government had even in the execution evinced its corruption. Then showing in detail how this benefit had been produced he traced the mischief created by men whom he called the sharks of Lisbon and other great towns, meaning speculators, principally Englishmen, whose nefarious cupidity led them to cry down the credit of the army-bills, and then purchase them, to the injury of the public and of the poor people who furnished the supplies.

A plan of recoining the Spanish dollars and so gaining eight in the hundred of pure silver which they contained above that of the Portuguese cruzado, he treated as a fraud, and a useless one. In Lisbon, where the cruzado was current, some gain might perhaps be made; but it was not even there certain, and foreigners, Englishmen and Americans, from whom the great supplies were purchased, would immediately add to their prices in proportion to the deterioration of the coin. Moreover the operations and expenditure of the army were not confined to Lisbon, nor even to Portugal, and the cruzado would not pass for its nominal value in Spain; thus instead of an advantage, the greatest inconvenience would result from a scheme at the best unworthy of the British government. In fine the reform of abuses, the discontinuance of useless expenses, economy and energy were the only remedies.

Such was his reasoning but it had little effect on his persecutors; for when his best men were falling by hundreds, his brightest visions of glory fading on the smoky walls of Burgos, he was again forced to examine and refute anew, voluminous plans of Portuguese finance, concocted by Funchal and Villiers, with notes by Vansittart. All the old schemes of the Principal Souza, which had been so often before analyzed and rejected as impracticable, were revived with the addition of a mixed Anglo-Portuguese commission for the sale of the crown and church lands. And these projects were accompanied with complaints that frauds had been practised on the custom-house, and violence used towards the inhabitants by the British commissaries, and it was insinuated such misconduct had been the real cause of the financial distresses of Portugal. The patient industry of genius was never more severely taxed.

Wellington began by repelling the charges of exactions and frauds, as applied to the army; he showed that to reform the custom-house so as to prevent frauds, had been his unceasing recommendation to the Portuguese government; that he had as repeatedly, and in detail, shewed the government, how to remedy the evils they complained of, how to increase their customs, how to levy their taxes, how in fine to arrange their whole financial system in a manner that would have rendered their revenues equal to their expenses, and without that oppression and injustice which they were in the habit of practising; for the extortions and violence complained of, were not perpetrated by the English but by the Portuguese commissariat, and yet the troops of that nation were starving. Having exposed Funchal’s ignorance of financial facts in detail, and challenged him to the proof of the charges against the British army, he entered deeply into the consideration of the great question of the sale of the crown and church lands, which it had been proposed to substitute for that economy and reform of abuses which he so long, so often, and so vainly had pressed upon the regency. The proposal was not quite new. “I have already,” he observed, “had before me a proposition for the sale or rather transfer, to the creditors of the ‘Junta de Viveres’ of crown lands; but these were the uncultivated lands in Alemtejo, and I pointed out to the government the great improbability that any body would take such lands in payment, and the injury that would be done to the public credit by making the scheme public if not likely to be successful. My opinion is that there is nobody in Portugal possessed of capital who entertains, or who ought to entertain, such an opinion of the state of affairs in the Peninsula, as to lay out his money in the purchase of crown lands. The loss of a battle, not in the Peninsula even, but elsewhere, would expose his estate to confiscation, or at all events to ruin by a fresh incursion of the enemy. Even if any man could believe that Portugal is secure against the invasion of the enemy, and his estate and person against the ‘violence, exactions, and frauds’ (these were Funchal’s words respecting the allied army) of the enemy, he is not, during the existence of the war, according to the Conde de Funchal’s notion, exempt from those evils from his own countrymen and their allies. Try this experiment, offer the estates of the crown for sale, and it will be seen whether I have formed a correct judgment on this subject.” Then running with a rapid hand over many minor though intricate fallacies for raising the value of the Portuguese paper-money, he thus treated the great question of the church lands.

First, as in the case of crown lands, there would be no purchasers, and as nothing could render the measure palatable to the clergy, the influence of the church would be exerted against the allies, instead of being, as hitherto, strongly exerted in their favour. It would be useless if the experiment of the crown lands succeeded, and if that failed the sale of church lands could not succeed; but the attempt would alienate the good wishes of a very powerful party in Spain, as well as in Portugal. Moreover if it should succeed, and be honestly carried into execution, it would entail a burthen on the finances of five in the hundred, on the purchase-money, for the support of the ecclesiastical owners of the estates. The best mode of obtaining for the state eventually the benefit of the church property, would be to prevent the monasteries and nunneries from receiving novices, and thus, in the course of time, the pope might be brought to consent to the sale of the estates, or the nation might assume possession when the ecclesiastical corporations thus became extinct. He however thought that it was no disadvantage to Spain or Portugal, that large portions of land should be held by the church. The bishops and monks were the only proprietors who lived on their estates, and spent the revenues amongst the labourers by whom those revenues had been produced; and until the habits of the new landed proprietors changed, the transfer of the property in land from the clergy to the laymen would be a misfortune.

This memoir, sent from the trenches of Burgos, quashed Funchal’s projects; but that intriguer’s object was not so much to remove financial difficulties, as to get rid of his brother’s opponents in the regency by exciting powerful interests against them; wherefore failing in this proposal, he ordered Redondo, now marquis of Borba, the minister of finance, to repair to the Brazils, intending to supply his place with one of his own faction. Wellington and Stuart were at this time doggedly opposed by Borba, but as the credit of the Portuguese treasury was supported by his character for probity, they forbade him to obey the order, and represented the matter so forcibly to the prince regent, that Funchal was severely reprimanded for his audacity.

It was amidst these vexations that Wellington made his retreat, and in such destitution that he declared all former distress for money had been slight in comparison of his present misery. So low were the resources, that British naval stores had been trucked for corn in Egypt; and the English ministers, finding that Russia, intent upon pushing her successes, was gathering specie from all quarters, desired Mr. Stuart to prevent the English and American captains of merchant vessels from carrying coin away from Lisbon; a remedial measure, indicating their total ignorance of the nature of commerce. It was not attempted to be enforced. Then also they transmitted their plan of supplying the English army by requisitions on the country, a plan the particulars of which may be best gathered from the answers to it.

Mr. Stuart, firm in opposition, shortly observed that it was by avoiding and reprobating such a system, although pursued alike by the natives and by the enemy, that the British character, and credit, had been established so firmly as to be of the greatest use in the operations of the war. Wellington entered more deeply into the subject.