They proceeded to speak with becoming feeling and becoming pride of the manner in which the emigrants from the ravaged provinces had been received wherever they had fled. The great expense of subsisting the fugitives at Lisbon had been supported, they said, by the resources which were at the disposal of Government, but still more by the voluntary donations of individuals, among whom they mentioned with particular distinction, the British subjects in Portugal. It remained for completing the work, to restore the fugitives to their homes; to render habitable the towns which the barbarians had left covered with filth and unburied carcases; to relieve with medicine and food the sick, who were perishing for want of such assistance; to revive agriculture, by supplying the husbandman with seed corn, and bread for his consumption for some time, and facilitating his means of purchasing cattle and acquiring the instruments of agriculture. These, they said, were the constant cares of the Government, these were their duties; but their funds were not even sufficient to provide for their defence, and therefore they called upon individuals for further aid.
♦LORD WELLINGTON ASKS RELIEF FOR THE SUFFERING PORTUGUEZE.♦
Lord Wellington in the preceding autumn, as soon as he fell back to the lines of Torres Vedras, had represented to his own Government the distress to which those districts must be reduced through which the enemy passed, ... a distress which Portugal had no means of relieving. “Upon former occasions,” he said, “the wealthy inhabitants of Great Britain, and of London in particular, had stepped forward to relieve foreign nations, whether suffering under the calamities inflicted by Providence, or by a cruel and powerful enemy. Portugal had once before experienced such a proof of friendship from her oldest and most faithful ally: but never was there case in which this assistance was required in a greater degree than at present, whether the sufferings of the people, or their loyalty and patriotism, and their attachment to England, were considered. I declare,” said Lord Wellington, “that I have scarcely known an instance in which any person in Portugal, of any order, has had communication with the enemy, inconsistent with his duty to his own sovereign, or with the orders he had received. There is no instance of the inhabitants of any town or village having remained, or of their having failed to remove what might be useful to the enemy, when they had sufficiently early intimation of the wishes of Government, or of myself, that they should abandon their houses, and carry away their property.” He therefore recommended this brave and suffering people to the British Government, and the British people, whenever the country should be cleared of its barbarous invaders, as he hoped and trusted that it would.