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end by killing me. Frightful pictures surround me constantly; I have them always before me. I conjure your Majesty to let me as soon as possible go to kiss your royal hand, and sit on the steps of your throne. I seek only to procure a happy tranquillity." Another letter is thus expressed." They wish, and they say they wish, to proclaim me Emperor. I protest to your Majesty, I will never be perjured; I will never be false to you. If they ever commit this folly, it shall not be till after they have cut me into pieces, me and all the Portuguese; a solemn oath, which I have written here with my blood, in the following words: "I swear to be always faithful to your Majesty and the Portuguese nation and constitution.'"

was now no resource but to escape as silently as he could, and this reluctant alternative was carried into execution with admirable presence of mind; knowing that the concussions of a single shot might extinguish the remnant of the breeze, not a shot was fired; he dexterously availed himself of that remnant, and unmolested, made his way back to his station off the harbour. The attack on Bahia on the land side was next attempted; but, after a long conflict, the Brazilians were repulsed. The indefatigable spirit of the Brazilian Admiral was again displayed in the preparations for a second attack. But an accident, by which his ship was set on fire, and in consequence of which many of his crew were drowned, postponed this enterprise. It however soon became unnecessary. The Portuguese General, exhausted with perpetual alarms, and hopeless of succours from home, determined to abandon the place. In 1823, he sailed out of the harbour of Bahia, with a fleet of thirteen ships of war, convoying thirty-two sail of transports freighted with all his troops, stores, and public and private property. Lord Cochrane was instantly on the alert, put to sea, hunted them across the equator, took one half of their transports, totally dispersed the rest, and then returned to capture the few Portuguese who were left behind in the country garrisons. They speedily surrendered, were sent to Europe, and the new empire was finally freed from the stain of a foreign army. All was now calm, and the rites of the civil dignity had time to be solemnized. The 1st of December 1823, the anniversary of the deliverance of Portugal, under the Braganzas, from the yoke of Spain, was chosen to set the seal to the final independence of the empire. On this day, Dom Pedro was crowned.

In the wrath of the Portuguese at this assumption of power, some of Dom Pedro's letters to his father during the Regency were shewn, and severally commented upon, as involving treachery and even perjury. "I supplicate your Majesty," says one of these letters, "by all that is sacred in the world, to dispense with the painful functions which you have assigned to me, which will

But before we charge any man with so heavy a crime as perjury, we should consider the circumstances. These letters were written in September 1821. The coronation did not take place until December 1823. During this period, the authority of the Cortes had continued to grow more imperious, until the throne was absolutely a cypher, and the old King little better than a prisoner. Two years of this progress might justly make a very serious difference in any man's contemplations: during all this time, too, the fury of the Portuguese mob, who were the actual masters of both King and Cortes, was boundless against the people and government of the Brazils. The latter dispatches of the Cortes were equivalent to an actual sentence of exile, or the dungeon, which would have been not far from an equivalent to death at any time in Portugal. A prince and father might well have weighed probabilities before he threw himself and his children into the hands of a rabble of furious zealots or brutal assassins. In the alternative of security in Brazil, or insult and possible death in Portugal, there could be no doubt in the mind of any rational man. No pledges could bind him to deliver himself, much more his family, to popular ferocity; and if the breach of faith existed at all, it must be laid to the charge of those who rendered compliance with its conditions totally impossible.

The death of the Empress, in the

next year, was a source of great public sorrow. She died in child-birth, after having been the mother of six children, two sons and four daughters, the eldest of whom, a son, died at an early age, and the youngest, Dom Pedro d'Alcantara, born December 2, 1825, is the heir. Donna Maria da Gloria, of whom we have heard so much as the intended Queen of Portugal, was born April 4, 1819.

The habits of the late Empress were unfortunately but ill adapted to secure the affections of a royal husband, peculiarly among the loose and capricious moralities of a southern race. When she first appeared, she attracted general admiration by her fairness of complexion, and her blonde hair, which were novelties in the eyes of the sallow Brazilians. But after a short period, whether from natural indolence, displeasure at her husband's coldness, or possibly through some growing fantasy of mind, she began utterly to neglect her appearance. In a country where every woman spends half her income on the decoration of her feet and legs, which are remarkably delicate, this honest daughter of Austria always appeared in clumsy boots; where half the day is spent in curling and braiding the hair, she appeared with her locks hanging loose down her shoulders; instead of the basquinas and mantillas, the most graceful of all dresses, and without which a Portuguese lady would as soon appear as without her head, the Empress was wrapped up in a man's great-coat; and to complete the whole absurdity, she rode astride, a custom common among the peasantry in the provinces, and for that reason the more abhorred in the capital. And all those gross and repulsive habits were displayed in association with Dom Pedro, a man proverbially and punctiliously attentive to appearances, delicate in his tastes, and refined and shewy in every thing that related to costume. The unfortunate result was, that the Emperor soon found others more attentive to their equipment and his tastes, and the Empress was left alone. But her general kindness of heart, her affability, and her charity, made her popular; and though she

must have been the most repellent of all spouses, she perhaps answered all the general purposes of a Queen.

Her illness excited all the resour. ces of Brazilian piety, such as piety is in the lands of Popery. Masses, processions of images, and visitations of shrines, were adopted without number. But among the rest was one honour, conspicuous above every thing of human homage. The unfortunate Empress was visited, as was announced in the public document," by the wonder-working and all-glorious image of the Virgin, Nossa Senhora da Gloria." As the Empress had paid particular attentions to the saint, the saint rightly judged that this was the true time to shew her sense of those attentions. The image accordingly came to her bedside. "The people," says the historian of this event, "could not see, without the strongest emotions of piety, her image, which had never condescended to issue from the temple before, on this occasion, for the first time, and even under a heavy shower of rain, visiting the Princess, who had never failed on Sundays to be found at the foot of her altar." The condescension was unhappily useless, for after a short illness, borne with great fortitude, the poor Empress died, December the 11th, at the age of 29.

The return of Dom John the Sixth to his native throne was hailed with national exultation; and for a month he felt himself entitled to rejoice in the royal spirit of enterprise which had led him to cross the seas. But with the month the self-congratulation approached its end. He found that he had left only one shape of disturbance for another; " that riot in Portugal was as turbulent as riot in the remotest shore of the Atlantic; and that wherever he turned his steps, he must prepare to face the new philosophy of revolution. Patriotism is a high name. But true patriotism is not to be learned but in the school of honesty, honour, and the domestic virtues. The larger portion of foreign patriotism has been trained in another institute. Voltaire has been the legislator, infidelity the religion, and the deepest

personal corruption the morality. Jacobinism, like the plague in Turkey, never dies. It shifts its quarters, it may shift its disguise; it may at one time flourish under the grand pretence of national rights, at another it may be the petitioner against national injuries, it may be the reclaimer of ancient privileges, or the ostentatious creator of new freedom, but in all the robes of the masquerade the masquer is the same. Its motto is subversion. Its success is overthrow. Its principle is a hatred of all the existing forms, properties, and classifications, of men and things. It not merely refuses the aid of experience, it disclaims experience; its province is the untried, the hazardous, and the desperate-projects endeared by their mere extravagance, and triumphs the more congenial for their being deeper dyed in plunder, profligacy, and blood. The inveterate activity of this pernicious agent was let loose on the Peninsula. The copies of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and the whole host of the guilty literature of France, poured into Spain and Portugal, amounted to hundreds of thousands. The general fretfulness of the popular mind in every state of the Continent infected the multitude, and under the symbols and name of Freemasonry, every town of the Peninsula had its Jacobin club. From the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, all was ramified with conspiracy against the throne, the property of the higher orders, and the ancient government of the nation.

At last the insurrection broke out in Spain. The King, relying on his army alone, was deserted by his army, and made prisoner. The government was broken down. The insurgents were masters of the kingdom. Never was a conquest more easily achieved, or more wretchedly sustained. The new dynasty of Jacobinism was instantly found in competent to the simplest duties of sovereignty. Their power was in harangues; their wisdom in exposing the nation to domestic feud and foreign hostility; their policy in stripping the throne, until they raised first the suspicion, and next the scorn, of every throne of Europe against their feeble presumption. The friendly Powers remonstrated,

advised, implored in vain. Moderation was an offence to the dignity of this mountebank government. They refused all compromise, defied Europe, invoked the tutelar genius of Revolution throughout the world and fled at the first shot; swore to bury themselves under the ruins of their constitution, and at the first wave of a French banner, scattered themselves, with a contemptible love of life, through every hidingplace of the globe.

Jacobinism had been not less active in Portugal, but its chief force had been exerted in Spain. The grand experiment of the new order of overthrow was to be made there; and Portugal was thus saved from the direct convulsion. But if it was not within the actual crater of the volcano, it was fully within the range of its clouds and ashes. Masonic clubs were established every where in Portugal. The populace were every where stimulated to suspect the King, insult the authorities, and depreciate the ancient forms of government. The King was intimidated into a change of ministry, and his new ministers were dictated to him by the masonic lodges; extravagant innovation was running the round of the kingdom, and the kingdom must have soon sunk into anarchy or a republic. The danger was excessive, and its excess roused the higher ranks from the habitual indolence of the foreign nobility. A strong party was formed, with the Queen at its head, for the protection of the throne and constitution; but the innovators were already in possession of the whole power of the state, the King, and the kingdom.

It is a characteristic of the hasty revolutions of the Peninsula, that they have been exclusively the work of the army. Disbanded troops are bad legislators, and ill-paid armies are worse. The war had impoverished the finances of the Peninsula ; the soldiery took the law into their own hands; and the Spanish army in the Isle of Leon hoisted the standard of revolt in 1820. A regiment in Oporto followed its example in August of the same year. They demanded a Cortes. They were seconded by the sudden outcry of Jacobinism throughout the Peninsula and Europe. The populace were told to expect release

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personal corruption the morality. Jacobinism, like the plague in Turkey, never dies. It shifts its quarters, it may shift its disguise; it may at one time flourish under the grand pretence of national rights, at another it may be the petitioner against national injuries, it may be the reclaimer of ancient privileges, or the ostentatious creator of new freedom, but in all the robes of the masquerade the masquer is the same. Its motto is subversion. Its success is overthrow. Its principle is a hatred of all the existing forms, properties, and classifications, of men and things. It not merely refuses the aid of experience, it disclaims experience; its province is the untried, the hazardous, and the desperate-projects endeared by their mere extravagance, and triumphs the more congenial for their being deeper dyed in plunder, profligacy, and blood. The inveterate activity of this pernicious agent was let loose on the Peninsula. The copies of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and the whole host of the guilty literature of France, poured into Spain and Portugal, amounted to hundreds of thousands. The general fretfulness of the popular mind in every state of the Continent infected the multitude, and under the symbols and name of Freemasonry, every town of the Peninsula had its Jacobin club. From the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, all was ramified with conspiracy against the throne, the property of the higher orders, and the ancient government of the nation.

advised, implored in vain. Modera
tion was an offence to the dignity
of this mountebank government.
They refused all compromise, defied
Europe, invoked the tutelar genius
of Revolution throughout the world

and fled at the first shot; swore
to bury themselves under the ruins
of their constitution, and at the first
wave of a French banner, scattered
themselves, with a contemptible
love of life, through every hiding-
place of the globe.

Jacobinism had been not less active
in Portugal, but its chief force had
been exerted in Spain. The grand
experiment of the new order of over
throw was to be made there; and
Portugal was thus saved from the
direct convulsion. But if it was not
within the actual crater of the vol
cano, it was fully within the range of
its clouds and ashes. Masonic clubs
were established every where in
Portugal. The populace were every
where stimulated to suspect the
King, insult the authorities, and de-
preciate the ancient forms of govern
ment. The King was intimidated
into a change of ministry, and his
new ministers were dictated to him
by the masonic lodges; extravagant
innovation was running the round
of the kingdom, and the kingdom
must have soon sunk into anarchy
or a republic. The danger was ex-
cessive, and its excess roused the
higher ranks from the habitual indo-
lence of the foreign nobility. A
strong party was formed, with the
Queen at its head, for the protection

of the throne and constitution; but
the innovators were already in pos-
session of the whole power of the
state, the King, and the kingdom.

It is a characteristic of the hasty revolutions of the Peninsula, that

insurgents were masters of the king- they have been exclusively the work

of the army. Disbanded troops are The war had impoverbad legislators, and ill-paid armies are worse.

At last the insurrection broke out in Spain. The King, relying on his army alone, was deserted by his The army, and made prisoner. The government was broken down.

dom. Never was a conquest more

easily achieved, or more wretchedly The new dynasty of

sustained.

Jacobinism was instantly found in- ished the finances of the Peninsula; competent to the simplest duties of the soldiery took the law into their Sovereignty. Their power was in own hands; and the Spanish army in harangues; their wisdom in exposing the Isle of Leon hoisted the standard the nation to domestic feud and of revolt in 1820. A regiment in Oporforeign hostility; their policy in to followed its example in August of stripping the throne, until they the same year. They demanded a raised first the suspicion, and next Cortes. They were seconded by the the scorn, of every throne of Europe sudden outcry of Jacobinism throughinst their feeble presumption. out the Peninsula and Europe. The Powers remonstrated, populace were told to expect release

from all burdens-a golden age-and
they gladly echoed the cry. The
King was terrified by the uproar, and
the Cortes were established, with
the code of Cadiz of 1812, totally
hostile as it was to the ancient in-
stitutions, and breathing the spirit of
republicanism in every line for their
acknowledged model. The Cortes
continued its control for nearly
three years. Its folly had long sign-
ed its fate. The Queen and the
nobles saw that it was sinking; and
they determined that it should sink
thoroughly. The eldest son of the
throne was in Rio de Janeiro; they
put the second, Dom Miguel, at the
head of a small body of troops on
the 27th of May 1823, at Villa Franca,
some miles from Lisbon. There he
published a proclamation, declaring
the uselessness of the Cortes; and
there he was joined by the King.
The nation, weary of the burlesque
of liberty, received the proclamation
with a burst of joy, and the King
was once more a Sovereign. The
Cortes followed the example of their
brothers of Spain, swore to shed the
last drop of their blood for liberty,
and ran away with the oath on their
lips. Some filed outright; about sixty
signed a protest, and fled after them.
The rest made their submission,
Dom Miguel, then a boy, was ap-
pointed Generalissimo by the King
in sign of royal approbation.
But the measure was imperfect.
The King, still alarmed by the me-
naces of the defeated revolutionists,
took the measure of appointing a
minister hostile to the Queen's party.
This was felt to be an insult, and the
same daring experiment of force was
again tried. On the 30th of April,
Dom Miguel, as commander-in-chief,
ordered a body of troops to parade
in one of the squares of Lisbon, and
sent detachments to arrest the mi-
nisters, Pamplona, Palmela, the
head of the police, of the customs,
and some other obnoxious heads of
departments. But the alarm had
rapidly spread, the palace was roused,
the ambassadors of the foreign Pow
ers hastened to protect the King
from what they conceived to be a
revolution. The troops were sent
to their quarters, and Lisbon re-
mained in a state of formidable ex-
citement. The excitement rapidly
increased, until John the Sixth con-

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCIII.

ceived that his life was in da The French ambassador then posed that he should retire on the French fleet until the d bance was appeased. The offe curiously characteristic of the of compliment; there was no F fleet in the Tagus. A letter w patched to their squadron in But in the mean time the ambassador had offered the K asylum in Windsor Castle. King went on board, and pul an edict, censuring the late t tions. Dom Miguel, on the 101 admitted to the royal prese the purpose of vindicating hi and, in pursuance of the or his appearance, he was not s to reland. A letter was pul as written by him, and ev dictated under duresse, apol for his errors as those of and "fearing that his pres Portugal might afford a pr evil-minded persons to ren turbances and intrigues, reign to the pure sentiment he had just uttered, reques Majesty's permission to tr some time in Europe," & letter was dated the 12th, a same day the Prince was board a frigate for Brest, t be transmitted into the car tody of Prince Metternich a During his absence a Cour quiry was formed for the purpose of investigating th all persons concerned u orders of Dom Miguel. The sion was busily employed year and a half. No evide be procured of any culpab Prince, beyond that of th arrest of the ministers. end of that time, the Kin with the uselessness of th ing, or alarmed at the op sions of the public disgust the tribunal.

At Vienna, there can b whatever, that the Portugu was a prisoner. He was the court with great civil was not suffered to have spondence with his co Portuguese were prohi approaching him. Thoug about the person of the was not suffered to go v his Italian tour, notoriou

B

facility of escape from the Italian ports, but was sent to travel in Hungary. The fact of duresse is confirmed by the subsequent acknowledgment of a stipulation on the part of Austria, "not to let loose Dom Miguel, to oppose in Portugal the execution of his brother's decrees."

In the mean time, the old King John the Sixth had died, and the crown had been offered to Dom Pedro, on condition, of course, of his returning from Brazil, and answered by the following Imperial declaration, at the opening of the Brazilian Chambers:

"On the 24th of last April, the anniversary of the embarkation of my father and lord, Dom John the Sixth, for Portugal, I received the melancholy and unexpected news of his death. The keenest grief seized upon my heart. The plan which it was incumbent on me to follow, on finding myself, when I least expected it, the legitimate King of Portugal, Algarves, and the dominions thereof, rushed to my mind. Grief and duty alternately swayed my breast; but laying every thing aside, I looked to the interests of Brazil. I clung to my word. I wished to uphold my own honour, and deliberated within myself what could promote the happiness of Portugal; what it would be indecorous for me not to do. How great must have been the agony that tortured my heart, on seeking out the means of promoting the happiness of the Portuguese nation, without offending Brazil, and of separating them (notwithstanding that they are already separate), in such manner as that they may never again be united! I confirmed in Portugal the regency which my father had appointed. I proclaimed an amnesty. I bestowed a constitution. I dedicated and yielded up all the indisputable and inalienable rights which I held to the crown of the Portuguese monarchy, and the sovereignty of these kingdoms, in favour of my much beloved and esteemed daughter and Princess, Donna Maria da Gloria, now Queen of Portugal, Maria the Second. This I felt bound to do for my own honour and that of Brazil. Let those still incredulous Brazilians, therefore, know (as they already ought to have known) that the interest of Brazil, and the love

of her independence, are so strong in me, that I abdicated the crown of the Portuguese monarchy, which, by indisputable right belonged to me, only because it might hereafter implicate the interests of Brazil, of which country I am the perpetual defender."

The constitution to which the speech alludes, was the memorable one so unaccountably taken charge of by the British minister, Sir Charles Stuart, and which Dom Pedro had compiled within a week; one half, as is alleged, copied from the French constitution of 1791, and the other half from the new Brazilian code. Why the Brazilian Emperor should have promulgated a republican constitution is not to be reasoned upon. According to some, it was to secure popularity with the Brazilians, who are all amateurs in legislation; according to others, it was from an ambition of making a government on his own plan. But in Portugal it was received with infinite disgust by the whole influential part of the community. The pride of the nation was equally irritated by the rejection of its crown, and by its disposal. The ancient sovereignty of Portugal seemed thrown into contempt by its being thus summarily given to a child. The men of property were alarmed by the revolutionary turn of the charter. The patriots felt that the long minority of the little Princess would virtually render Portugal but a viceroyalty in the hands of the Regents appointed by Dom Pedro, and the kingdom but a province of Brazil. The spirit of insubordination rapidly spread; it grew too strong to be checked by the feeble government of the Infanta, who had been appointed to the Regency on the death of the King; and in the month of September 1826, a regiment quartered at Braganza, under the Viscount de Monte Alegre, proclaimed Dom Miguel, and marched to the Spanish frontier, where they were joined by a number of soldiery and some civil functionaries. At the same moment, in the Alentejo, nearly all the regiments proclaimed Dom Miguel, and protested against the charter. The insurrection became general, and the Regency was on the point of being forcibly extinguished. In this emergency the

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