ence: blood flows unceasingly: the war is perpetuated, and the fruit is never to be attained.
The continuation of such a contest is the worst evil that we can experience, and the effects of the ruin which it entails upon us will hardly be less felt in the Peninsula than here. The war, besides the fatal consequences with which it must always be attended, detains in this country the few Europeans who have any thing still to lose, and prevents them either from assisting the Government, or even subsisting, with comfort, themselves: the war dries up the very sources of our prosperity: it renders contributions a mere name, by destroying those branches of industry upon which they ought to be levied: it diminishes our population, and converts what still remains of it into robbers and assassins: the war teaches the insurgents, to our cost, the art of making it with success, and gives them but too good a knowledge of their advantages in point of number and resources.
The war strengthens and propagates the desire of Independence, holding out a constant hope of our destruction, a longing desire for which (I must again assure your Excellency) is general amongst all classes, and has penetrated into every corner of the kingdom.
The war affords the Insurgents an opportunity of knowing Foreign Powers, with whom they form connexions, and from whom they receive aid: the war, in fine, destroys, in detail, our little army, either by the fruitless fatigues of a campaign under the present system, or by exposing it to the influence of seduction, to which the apparent remoteness of our success gives but too much room, and the effects of which are felt even amongst the European soldiers, without its being possible for the Government either to replace them or the arms which they generally carry off.
The usual means of recruiting are useless amongst a people which detest the armies of the King; conscription is of no avail, on account of the want of order in the villages, and the opposition of the Ayuntamientos. Forced levies, which are sometimes attempted, only serve to swell the number of our regiments for the moment, and afterwards to strengthen the ranks of the enemy, while our small stock of military stores is
