and disgraced administration to which it had succeeded. The council of state was still composed of the creatures of Villèlé; it still contained his director-general and prefect of the police. In the provinces, the prefects, the mayors, and the members of the general councils of departments were chiefly partisans of the same faction-men who had been notorious for their mal-practices with public franchises, and who had been placed in their offices for the purpose of abusing their power to the advantage of their masters. In their agents and fellow councillors, the ministers thus found persons more inclined to betray their present masters than to rebel against their former patrons-eager to counteract the projects of the government, and to prepare by their overthrow the return of Villèle to power. The popular party told the ministers, that, while this combination remained, it could not trust them; it called upon them to get rid of so many sources of suspicion and embarrassment, and, consequently, of weakness, and to surround the throne with men to whose principles the country could look up with confidence, and in whose conduct it would find a security for their principles. It bade them remember, that they had not been the choice of the people to celebrate its triumph, but the choice of the king to break his fall; that the former conduct of some of them had been such, and all of them had consented to be introduced into such company, as surrounded them with suspicion ;— that they had been supported only because there was more hope of them than of the impenitently profligate ministry who had preceded them;-that the members of

that ministry were still the heads of a vigilant and powerful party, strong in the royal favour, aided by the influence and the intrigues of the church;-that, if they persisted therefore in still keeping in office the partisans and creatures of that dangerous faction, the friends of constitutional govern ment must conclude that they themselves were not in earnest, and must exercise the power, which they had shown that they posses sed, to give his majesty another opportunity of choosing servants of greater energy and less dubious sincerity.

The ministers, to whom the votes of the session had made it abundantly manifest that their fate was in the hands of the popular party, would willingly have com plied with these remonstrances. Even if they had been less inclined to liberal ideas than their measures, in all candid construction, shewed them to be, their own safety impressed them with the folly of resisting. But they were restrained by the obstinacy of the king. His majesty had no favour towards the popular party; the description which they had given him of his government, rendered the possibility of having them around him no pleasing prospect: their determined animosity to the Jesuits and the congregation made him regard it as a dangerous one. His royal signature was with M. Roy and his colleagues; but his royal wishes were with M. Villèle and his friends. It is true that the ministers might have made very short work with the resistance of his majesty's attachments and prejudices. They had only to resign: the king must have taken the servants whom the majority of the chamber gave him.

But

then, it was much more than doubtful whether the Chamber, on the occurrence of such an event would fix its choice on the members of the present cabinet. Vacillating between these opposite motives-unwillingness to press the king too far, upon the one hand, and the fear of rousing the resentment of the triumphant majority upon the other, the ministers still continued to submit to the influence of the dependents of the court, thus running the risk of appearing to identify themselves with that party, and provoking the enmity of those whose exertions had given them power, had kept them in power, and, to all appearances, could again drive them from power. At length, however, as the year wore round-as the season at which they must meet the chambers again approached, and the reproaches and remonstrances of the popular party became more threatening, they shook off their lethargy, and roused themselves to a better sense of what was due to their safety, if not to their honour. In the month of November, five counsellors of state, steady adherents of the Villèle adminis tration, were dismissed from the council of state. Among them were Franchet, who had been the director-general, and Delavau, who had been the prefect of that minister's arbitrary, police. Seven new members were admitted, all of whom were either decided constitutionalists, or men obnoxious to the late administration. It was not the liberals alone who had broken it up. They had conquered by an alliance with the ultraism of the extreme right. That was the union which now ruled the chamber. In the provinces, five obnoxious prefects were dismissed,

and four more were deprived of the office of prefect, though called to other functions. Various minor changes were effected in the administration of the departments..

The foreign relations of France offered nothing worthy of record, that will not appear more in detail in another part of our narrative. Like England, she was a tranquil, though not an uninterested, spectator of the struggle between Russia and Turkey; and, in the autumn, she dispatched an expedition to the Morea to enforce the surrender of those fortresses of the Morea which remained in the hands of the Turks, after the departure of Ibrahim to Egypt.

In the course of the year, the last division of the army of occupation returned from Spain: Cadiz was the last fortress that they quitted; and thus terminated an expedition which had gained to France no one conceivable object, but had been to her a source of enormous and useless expense. The minister for foreign affairs stated, in the Chamber of Peers, that the army would have been withdrawn in 1827, had it not been for the events which then occurred in Portugal. The necessity of treating Ferdinand with peculiar delicacy, while a French army was in possession of his kingdom, had always been assigned by the French ministers as a reason for not acknowledging the revolted Spanish colonies. They were now freed from this restraint; and so soon as the evacuation of Cadiz had been resolved on, an agent was appointed to repair to the several states, and arrange the preliminary measures for the establishment of the usual diplomatic relations between friendly powers by accredited ministers.

cure of all the authority at which he could aim without the guilt of unnatural rebellion and very daring usurpation. Even the hatred of liberal institutions, in which he had been brought up, and the desire to blast the growth of those of Portugal, which he had already exhibited, could have followed after their object as securely and efficiently when he used, for the purpose of furthering them, the regular power with which he was legitimately invested, as if he were to excite a vigilant jealousy against all his measures by setting out with open treason against his brother and his queen. The constitutionalists of Portugal had, to be sure, abundant reason to distrust him. They knew that all his wishes leaned towards arbitrary power; they could scarcely expect that any vows would bind the man, who, in his hatred of liberty, had drawn the sword against his own father, and encouraged rebellion against his brother and sister; but they trusted that he would feel himself restrained by being only the representative of another; that he would be constrained to follow, in the general cast, at least, of his policy, the principles of the Court of Rio Janeiro, and that the liberality of Don Pedro would mitigate the ultraism of Don Miguel, through whom it was to act. Above all, they longed for an executive, to which at length all parties would submit, though for very different reasons, instead of the weak and wavering government, which, during two years, had been as often rebeiled against as obeyed. They thought themselves entitled to assume, that Don Miguel would at least observe the prescribed forms of the constitution, which he was called to administer as regent for

his brother; and while the forms remained, it lay with themselves to infuse into them a living and protecting spirit.-The enemies of the constitution, again, hailed the return of the prince as an oceurrence which sealed the fate of the new institutions. They knew that he was their own in heart; they doubted not that he would soon unite with them in destroying the object of their common hatred and alarm.

All the communications that had been received from Don Miguel since his nomination to the regency, had been favourable to the lovers of liberty and good order. He had accepted the office, and had thereby acknowledged the rights of the monarch who bestowed it, and pledged himself to use it for the purposes for which it bore to have been granted the maintenance of the charter-the gradual advancement of constitutional freedom. He had written to his sister from Vienna, that he was "determined to maintain inviolate the laws of the kingdom, and the institutions legally granted by our august brother, and cause them to be observed, and by them to govern the kingdom." He had made this declaration for the very purpose of quieting the public mind; and, with all other ranks in Portugal, he was already bound, by the solemnity of an oath, to observe the constitution which he was now appointed to administer.t The more sanguine drew hopes

• See vol. LXIX. p. [280.

+ It was said, that, before leaving this country, he had voluntarily written a letter to the most eminent person in this realm, saying "that, if he overthrew the constitution, he should be a wretch, a breaker of his oath, and an usurper of his brother's throne." He did overturn it,

even from the circumstance that, on his return to Portugal, he did not proceed directly from France to Lisbon, but repaired to London, and spent nearly two months among the princes and ministers of the country to which his own was most closely tied, amongst whom he would receive no impressions but what were favourable to the conduct which his duty required of him. He arrived in England in the end of December. The Portuguese subjects resident in London, all of them lovers of liberty, because they enjoyed the blessing of living under its protection, as sembled, so soon as he reached London, and waited upon him with an address, in which they congratulated him on his present destination "to secure the felicity of Portugal by supporting the laws of the kingdom, and the institutions granted by our Great King and Lord, Don Pedro, and to realize the hopes which your generous sentiments, already announced to your august sister, have deeply engraved in the hearts of all Portuguese." His royal highness thanked them, in general terms, for their attention. He dropped no syllable from which it could be inferred what he thought of their hopes, or what he meant to do with the Portuguese institutions. He remained in London, enjoying the pleasures of the capital, till the middle of February, when he sailed for Portugal; and on the 22nd of that month he arrived in the Tagus. --In the mean time, the Princess Regent had assembled the Cortes on the 2nd of January. She addressed to them the following speech-the dying speech of her regency." For the third time you meet in this place to continue the useful labours which the charter

of the Portuguese monarchy has confided in you. Your zeal is always the same. Every day new lights, the effect of calm experience, assure an honourable result to your exertions in the service of the country.

"You are not ignorant that much is still wanting completely to found and consolidate our political edifice. I do not doubt that you will now exert the most prudent diligence to accelerate the great work: the time is not long, but prudence and zeal can effect much, and you have given sufficient proofs that you possess both.

"The King, my august brother, who was inspired by a desire for our happiness to give us in the constitutional charter an indisputable proof of his wisdom and magnanimity, trusts to you to realize this great enterprise, which was pictured in his mind the noble title of his glory, and the invaluable pledge of the happiness of Portugal; and all the world now know how you deserve this confidence.

My beloved brother, the Infant Don Miguel, is charged by the laws and the orders of his Majesty with the regency of this kingdom. His intentions, conformable to those of the king, our august brother, have been manifested by him; and this event, agreeing with the political views of great nations, added to the measures of the government, has disarmed the parties, and calmed the agitations in the country, which was a necessary consequence of extraordinary circumstances. The government of a neighbouring nation, convinced of the true bonds which unite the reciprocal interests of the Peninsula, sincerely opposes the attempts, which madly ambitious and restless spirits have not ceased to make.