did what their master himself would have done, when they kept back the decree, and prevented it from being officially communicated to any of the European powers.

It must have been with sentiments of grievous vexation, and what is far more worthy of sympathy-it must have been with feelings of disappointed affection, both for what his brother had done, and what his daughter was to encounter-that the emperor received the intelligence of his dethronement. But he was helpless. To think of reconquering his kingdom by proclamations and decrees, would have been infinitely more chimerical than to think of governing it by them. However, he did address a proclamation to the Portuguese people on the occasion (July 25). He enumerated the illegal and unconstitutional acts which had been committed amongst them, down to the decree of the 3rd of May; he gave these proceedings their proper character; and spoke with due severity of their advisers and promoters. It was natural that he should spare the reputation of his brother; it was prudent that he should not proclaim the corruptions of royal blood; but he went unnecessarily far, and almost insulted the knowledge of the people whom he addressed, when he represented that brother as the subjugated victim of a party whom he detested, and imputed all the evils that had happened to a faction which oppressed equally the regent and the nation. The faction, to be sure, was as selfish and mischievous a faction as could be found; but Miguel was very far indeed from being a passive or unwilling instrument in their hands. The emperor, from his knowledge of the old queen

and her minions, may have believed his representation to be more correct than in truth it was; but in that case, he was sparing his brother at the expense of his mother. The notice which was taken of this proclamation in an article in the Lisbon Gazette, written by one of Miguel's ministers, shewed how little the latter and his friends were inclined to return the fraternal leniency of the emperor. It was a commentary on the proclamation, and a series of insults to Don Pedro. It compared him to Robespierre; it assured the world, that he must have written the document in question under the influence of

the horrid sect of freemasons, who are the enemies of the throne and the altar;"-" The raving follies of the proclamation," it was said, "are so monstrous, that neither ancient nor modern history can supply so disgraceful a production."

It

The emperor, in his full confidence in his worthless brother, had sent to Europe, with a numerous retinue, his daughter, the young queen Donna Maria. was intended, that she should land at Genoa, and proceed to Vienna, to her grandfather, the emperor of Austria; but when the frigate which conveyed her arrived at Gibraltar (September 2), and the full extent of Miguel's guilty triumph was ascertained, the young queen's conductors thought it prudent to take a different course, and they brought her to England. She landed at Falmouth on the 24th of September. She was received with royal honours, and entertained with all the magnificence which her tender years allowed, and with all the kindness which her years, her sex, and the peculiarity of her situation, demanded,

TH

HE history of Spain during the year, is a blank. She was as little known as if she had been blotted from the face of Europe. Even the most contemptible of the many states that had arisen in the transatlantic colonies of which she had been the mistress, excited greater interest than her long "sad day of nothingness." The insurrection in Catalonia, which gave some interest to the concluding months of the preceding year, had been quelled. The market, the gibbet, and the gallies, did their duty, without compunction, upon the rebels: the fanatical priests who had preached sedition, were reduced to silence by terror, or by higher commands. In the month of January, transports sailed from Barcelona for the other side of the Mediterranean, carrying away thirty-seven ecclesiastics, secular or regular, and two hundred and fifty-six citizens, condemned to drag out their lives, as banished felons, amid the burning sands, and beneath the pestilential skies, of the Spanish transport settlements in Africa. This was the merciful doom reserved, as it was announced, for all who had so compromised themselves, that a prosecution in the usual form would have been followed by a sentence of death, that is, for all whom the despot, or

the despot's agents found it desirable, on whatever account, to remove by the mere mandate of brute authority.

The king, who had visited, as we have recorded, the disturbed province, in order to tranquillize it by the authority of his own august presence, and convince the turbulent who rebelled in his name, that he was not a prisoner, or an instrument, in the hands of liberals, remained at Barcelona, till he had sated himself with the inflic tion of punishment, and believed that the last seeds of revolt had been destroyed. He then took his departure for the capital by Arragon and Navarre, and, after sojourning for some time in the provinces, returned to Madrid in the beginning of August.

But he did not leave behind him the deep tranquillity which he flattered himself with having established. Small bands of armed men made their appearance on various points inCatalonia, Arragon, and Valencia. They seemed to be nothing else than robbers, who cared not for politics, and could have no desire to excite insurrection except as a means of enabling them to plunder on a more extensive scale. They were always represented, however, as the forerunners of organized sedition, and the public ear was

adding, "that until then no labourers should go out to work for any of the surplice gentry." Their bands were increased by a great number of the inhabitants of the faubourgs, armed with sticks; and the whole body paraded the streets, crying out, "Long live the king, and no more tithes on vegetables.' They afterwards proceeded to the place where the property which had been seized was to be sold, and uttered loud threats against the archbishop and the clergy. The captain-general, wishing to use gentle means rather than force, sent to the rioters the king's lieu tenant, and the captain of the Minones (soldiers of the Pyrenees), who enjoyed great popularity. These two officers endeavoured to induce the multitude to return to their duty; but the insurgents cried out that the demand of the ecclesiastical chapter was as unjust as the decision of the court which had set aside the judgment of the first tribunal before which they had gained their cause. They would not be satisfied, they said, until the order to pay the tithe was reversed, and until the chapter gave up the seizure which they had made. It was then agreed, that a deputation from amongst them should go before the captain-general. This was done, and the deputies of the gardeners renewed their demands. The captain-general, judging from the temper of the people, that the employment of gentle means would be much more effectual than force, promised that the seizure should be taken off, and that the tithe should not be exacted. This promise was received with transports by the gardeners, and tranquillity was restored, at least in appearance. It deserves to be mentioned as a proof

of the determination of the populace, and of the utter forgetfulness of law which a lawless government had produced, that some of the gardeners, who had been prevailed upon by the priests to pay the tithe, were assassinated. The po pular movement was said to be under the guidance of men of a much higher rank, and was sus pected to be only the beginning of a much more extensive scheme." While the disturbance lasted, however, the Negros, or political liberals, prudently kept themselves within doors, lest they should be compromised in the tumult.

In the course of the year, Spain was relieved from the last remains of the French army of occupation. Ferdinand, in the end of 1826, had desired their removal, and it had been agreed that they should take their departure in the following year. This resolution was altered in consequence of the establishment of a constitutional government in Portugal, and the wish of Ferdinand to be secure against its influence. From that quarter he had no longer any fears. The constitution of Portugal was at an end: that country had now gotten a despot of its own, a ruler according to Ferdinand's own heart, a match for him in every species of political atrocity, and more than a match for him in personal profligacy. Spain, too, presented no alarming symptoms of the existence of liberal ideas, The government, during the five years that it had been protected by the French troops, had employed exile, and the dungeon, and the scaffold, too liberally and effectually, not to have crushed every expression of an aspiration after a better state of things. The only rebels with whom it had lately to deal, were rebels because

they thought that the king was not enough of a despot and had a lurking liking to constitutional notions. Ferdinand, therefore, felt, that he might dispense with the further protection of his French allies. Pampeluna and St. Sebastian in the north, Cadiz in the south, and Urgel on the northeastern frontier, were the only fortresses which they still occupied. From the two former they were withdrawn in the spring of the year. Cadiz was the last position that they retained. It was given up to Spanish troops in the course of September, and, before the end of the year, every French soldier had recrossed the Pyrenees, relieving Spain from a visitation which had bestowed no benefit upon it either in liberty, or in morals, but which had confirmed, if it had not planted, the melancholy reign of ignorance and oppression.

The Spanish government was as poor in pocket, as it was beggarly in disposition, and dishonest in principle. With difficulty could it be brought even to recognize its debts, to say nothing of payment. It still refused to acknowledge the bonds for the loan which the Cortes had negotiated in England; but there was a debt of a different kind, and likewise to British creditors, which it was at length prevailed upon to settle, at least upon paper. During the struggle of the Spanish people against France, about the period of 1808, many British individuals then connected by commercial habits with Spain, as well as others who were not, had furnished the Spanish forces and authorities with stores, provisions, and various goods, for which they received vouchers or memorandums, to which in some instances the authorities them VOL. LXX.

selves had not hesitated to affix their names. The claims, in some cases, were founded on acts of the Spanish authorities by which British subjects had been forced to contribute to the immediate exigencies of the times by forced loans, or other illegal exactions. To these were added losses at sea by British subjects, in consequence of their ships or property having been detained, and sometimes illegally confiscated and sold, by Spanish cruisers and ships of war. The claims of these persons were permitted to remain unadjusted from 1808 to the year 1823. In the latter year, on the 12th of March, it was agreed between the British government and that of Spain, by treaty, that they should be referred to a mixed commission of Spanish and English commissioners, who were, as the terms of the treaty ran, "to decide on these claims in a summary way," in order that such British subjects, as had suffered in consequence of the detention of their property under such circumstances, might receive satisfaction. This commission met in October, 1823, and above three hundred claims were referred to it, the amount of which was between 3,000,000l. and 4,000,000l. sterling. Every impediment was raised, every possible delay, even if only to obtain a single day, was resorted to by the Spanish conmissioners. By involving the claimants in this labyrinth and intricacy, during eighteen months in which the commissioners sat, no more than eighteen claims were investigated out of three hundred and thirty; and four claims out of these eighteen were determined to be just. Thus, several persons, whose property had been seized on the [P]