too-genial host at Regoa. That is a misconception easily explained. This
host's name happened to be Souza, and the apologist in question has very
rashly leapt at the conclusion that he was a member of that notoriously
intriguing family, of which the chief members were the Principal Souza,
of the Council of Regency at Lisbon, and the Chevalier Souza, Portuguese
minister to the Court of St. James's. Unacquainted with Portugal, our
apologist was evidently in ignorance of the fact that the name of Souza
is almost as common in that country as the name of Smith in this. He may
also have been misled by the fact that Principal Souza did not neglect
to make the utmost capital out of the affair, thereby increasing the
difficulties with which Lord Wellington was already contending as a
result of incompetence and deliberate malice on the part both of the
ministry at home and of the administration in Lisbon.

Indeed, but for these factors it is unlikely that the affair could ever
have taken place at all. If there had been more energy on the part of
Mr. Perceval and the members of the Cabinet, if there had been less bad
faith and self-seeking on the part of the Opposition, Lord Wellington's
campaign would not have been starved as it was; and if there had been
less bad faith and self-seeking of an even more stupid and flagrant
kind on the part of the Portuguese Council of Regency, the British
Expeditionary Force would not have been left without the stipulated
supplies and otherwise hindered at every step.

Lord Wellington might have experienced the mental agony of Sir John
Moore under similar circumstances fifteen months earlier. That he did
suffer, and was to suffer yet more, his correspondence shows. But his
iron will prevented that suffering from disturbing the equanimity of his
mind. The Council of Regency, in its concern to court popularity with
the aristocracy of Portugal, might balk his measures by its deliberate
supineness; echoes might reach him of the voices at St. Stephen's
that loudly dubbed his dispositions rash, presumptuous and silly;
catch-halfpenny journalists at home and men of the stamp of Lord Grey
might exploit their abysmal military ignorance in reckless criticism and
censure of his operations; he knew what a passionate storm of anger and
denunciation had arisen from the Opposition when he had been raised to
the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera,
and how, that victory notwithst