through threats of losing, or hopes of gaining; and such of these as he could not buy, he either incarcerated or exiled.

The public opinion claimed back the constitution of the ancient Cortes, which had been promised by the king. The minister was not strong enough openly to brave the opinion; he deluded it by an impudent out-jesting; he caused an illusive ordinance to be issued with the express purpose of imposing on the nation; he then endeavoured to disgust that nation with the exercise of its rights, by a thousand little mean incidents which the national good sense quickly redressed.

In order to appreciate the inconceivable egotism of this mean, insidious, and self-conceited minister, please to cast a look on some few acts of his administration, and you will perceive that their constant, sole, and invariable aim is himself, and none but himself. Is the point in question to restore to the nation its ancient liberties, which for ages were the glory of the monarchy? The minister, who dreaded recollections, sees himself already attacked by the liberty of the tribune, and sacrifices to his own fears the public interest and the inclinations of the mouarch. Is the administration to be re-organized? He expels from it the most capable persons, who are replaced by his own creatures; because those men, who have formerly known him, might recall to his mind sundry epochs, the remembrance of which would prove rather grating to him. Is the army to be attended to? It is again to his own profit that he re-organizes it. This army has need to revive under the command of a man whose merit and reputation may exert over it a great, legitimate, and moral influence; that man exists; the interest of the army, that of the crown, national gratitude, point him out and loudly call for him. But that man is a great captain, a man of honour, who was shedding his blood for Portugal, whilst Mr. de Pamplona was fighting in the ranks of her enemies; and this suffices to make the latter dread the presence of an officer whose reproachless conduct would have been the satire of his own. Thus, the

minister trampling under foot the interests of the state, contrived to get the command of the Portuguese army to be entrusted to a young prince, who, on account of his inexperience and of his neglected education, must necessarily fall under his guardianship.

Thus, what has become of that army, so well disciplined, so brave, so fine, and so truly obedient under the command of Marshal Beresford? It is now a kind of prætorian guard, ready to serve the designs of all the parties that keep it in their pay, and to crush to day the very man it has raised up yesterday.

At last, the assuaging of all the hatreds, and the moderation of all the parties, request that the royal clemency may re-open the gates of the country, or at least those of the courts of justice, to such Portuguese as have only been misled. But Mr. de Pamplona is aware that out of that number there are men to whom he lays under the greatest obligations, men who formerly restored him to his household gods, to his fortune, to his honours (not to his honour) and Mr. de Pamplona never had courage enough to sustain the presence of his benefactors; and it is by proscriptions and by exiles that he pays off the debt of gratitude.

See how

And see what have already been the effects of the immoderate thirst for domination of that little Machiavel. far the public weal has been led through all those deeds of complaisance, fright, and hesitation of Mr. de Pamplona's ministry. The government rests on nothing; there remains but a phantom of it. A scandalous division, which has drawn on the house of Braganza the pity of all Europe, has taken place between the monarch and his son. The King was induced by the most criminal intrigue, by the fictitious appearance of a danger which does not even exist in the timorous head of Mr. de Pamplona, to take refuge on board a foreign vessel, when the people and the army endeavoured to guess the motive of that inconceivable step. The government has

placed itself under the immediate direction of foreign diplomacy, by the whim of which it is scandalously tossed to and fro, in the eyes of all Europe and of the nation which blushes at it. The peace with Brasil, which the interest of both nations loudly call for, is indefinitely delayed; the finances exhausted, and the funds arising from the last loan swallowed up by preparations of war, which do not impose on any one, and which the ministry destinate to nothing else but to absorb the resources of the nation. In short, though two years have now elapsed since the counter revolution took place, though the ministry have not met with any real obstacle in their way, no step has yet really been adopted to re-establish security in the social relations, to annihilate the spirit of inquisition which disturbs families, and to harmonize the institutions with the wishes and well known wants of Portugal; whence it results that commerce is null, taxes considerable, and that all the private interests are suffering; and all this, because the power has devolved upon a man, who, a stranger to the great interests of the state, has merely seized the surface of things, and who, besides, always was, and always will be, overpowered by fear and the most absolute egotism.

This is not all yet. Whilst Portugal is ostensibly given up to the arbitrary power of a man, there are within the ministerial palaces, féminine intrigues carried on, which strangely contrast with the situation of public affairs. You are acquainted with the disgrace of Viscountess de Jourmanha; you know that that lady, one of the handsomest women in the kingdom, and whose family has been, for time immemorial, attached to the house of Braganza, was exiled, together with her husband, by Mr. de Pamplona, under the ridiculous pretence that she was of the Queen's party, in the affair of the Infant. The fact is, that this lady, whose only guilt is to be handsome and amiable, committed the heinous crime of amusing herself at the expense of the teeth and eye-brows of Madame de Pamplona who will not, in spite of nature and

of her mirrors, be the ugliest female in the whole kingdom. You are conscious that this was quite sufficient, and that, two days afterwards, the fair conspirator received an order to remove from court. You see, that if beauty caused the destruction of Troy, it is quite the reverse that ruins Portugal. It is asserted that it was the archbishop, minister of justice, who took upon himself to ask for her exile, through complacency for the hatred of Madame and the resentment of Mr. de Pamplona. It is thus, gentlemen, that every thing goes on for the best, in the best of kingdoms possible. I remain, &c.

MISCELLANIES.

DEATH OF ITURBIDE.

Our leading article and our military section were under press, when the news of the ex-Emperor Iturbide's death reached England. The nature of his enterprise and the circumstances which have attended it, had induced us to foretell that it would miscarry ; and that the man, who pretended to re-establish his fortune on the violation of plighted faith, might find nothing but a precipice where his rash imagination had placed a throne and altars. But, we did not think, we must own, that in a republic, where all citizens must be equal before the law, a summary sentence emanating from an exceptionable tribunal, in a word, a coup d'état should have inscribed the name of Iturbide on the list of the illustrious sufferers, who died without being able to invoke justice, which for

them had covered herself with a veil. We do not mean to stir up fresh hatreds, or excuse Iturbide; we even admit that his appearing on the Mexican shore was sufficient to bring down on his head the national vengeance; but at the same time as we frankly acknowledge his presumed culpability, we cannot help remembering that it is to him Mexico is indebted for its liberty and independence, and that on his score, he deserved that the benefit of the common law should be extended over him. A strange way this of impugning despotism, by opposing to it deeds of tyranny, and by introducing distinctions at the very foot of the scaffold. Did the republicans, who so hastily shot Iturbide, reflect that nothing is less republican than their own conduct?.... We shall in our next No. give an historical account of this unfortunate Mexican, as celebrious by the rapidity of his elevation, as by the suddenness of his downfall.

CHARLES X.

Charles X. occupies at last the throne of Louis XVIII, upon whose ashes the tomb has closed for ever. The former and the new government bestow an equal tribute of tears to the deceased monarch; and such indeed was the political life of that prince, that it would be difficult to say which of the two ought to feel most regret, either liberty or slavery. Charles X. whose accession seemed likely to prove fatal to the new ideas, has already conquered the votes of all parties; all France surrounds his throne, and a unanimous concert VOL. I. No.I.

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