single interest in the country; it is nothing more than a faction of prosing fools, of anarchical cosmopolites, without name, without property, without claim upon the public, without talent,-a faction that in no other manner belongs to Portugal, but that its members happened to be born on its soil, with no other propensity but to snatch up all the "loaves and fishes" of the state. They are without any principle, good or bad; they have been improperly accused of being "Ultra-Liberals;" they are anything and nothing,". the fæx of all parties,-the caput mortuum of all factions, from which unhallowed mixture has sprung forth a strange and unnatural monster. It is only thus, that we can explain the phenomenon of seeing them persecute equally the friends and the enemies of the national cause. False and ungrate ful towards some, and impolitic towards others, they have not only not gained a single friend-they have alienated all. The constitutional charter, tit. 8, sec. 19, says -No punishment shall pass beyond the person of the delinquent, and therefore, in no case whatever, shall be permitted any confiscation of property; nor can the infamy of the convicted be transmitted to his relations or descendants.' In our present circumstances, Sire, even if the charter did not, policy would most imperiously forbid confiscation. In the decree of the 31st of August, 1833, the Ministry, after an insidious preamble, proceed to an act of spoliation of the greater part of the landed proprietors in Portugal: for the militia, who were dragged from their houses, under pain of seeing them burnt, to fight in the usurper's cause, are com.

posed of the landed men of the provinces; they are too numerous to be called rebels; and having lost all hope of enjoying anything that constitutes human felicity, they may be excited to the enthusiasm of despair; they cannot, to be sure, succeed, because the cause of the usurper is desperate; but they may prolong this war of devastation, till this wretched country, brought to the brink of annihilation, exists only in name." The writer attacked various other acts of the ministry-recommended their dismissal, a restitution of all sequestered property, an amnesty to all but Don Miguel, and the execution of the law regarding the Liberty of the Press, which had passed the lower Chamber in 1828. But the granter of the Portuguese constitutional charter could not tolerate this freedom of discussion regarding the acts and character of his ministers. The printer of this letter was sent to prison. The author, who had put his name to it, did not escape, notwithstanding his peerage. He was arrested in the street by a tipstaff belonging to one of the common police-offices. On his way to prison he contrived to escape from his conductors, and fled to the house of a brother peer, the Conde de Ficalho, who not only refused to give him up, but threatened to shoot the policemen if they did not instantly quit his house. Not content with this, he immediately repaired to the emperor, and complained loudly of this violation of the privileges of a peer, who, by the constitutional charter, cannot be arrested except in flagrante delicto. The emperor professed total ignorance of the whole business, but recommended the count not to interfere with the course of justice by opposing the

THE THE capture of the citadel of Antwerp by a French army, in the end of the preceding year, and its delivery to the Belgians, did not accelerate the tardy negotiations on which the settlement of the dispute depended. Holland, indeed, had been deprived by force of what she would have been bound to surrender, if a definitive treaty had been signed; but that did not make her a party to the treaty. The proceeding would have been more intelligible, if France and England, having pledged themselves to Belgium to compel Holland to sign the treaty, or to maintain the former in the same situation as if it had been signed, had proceeded to enforce all its stipulations by the application of similar violence; but merely to reduce the citadel of Antwerp, while the very convention between the two Courts which led to this measure declared that no more was to be done, was only to take something from an independent state, too weak to resist more powerful neighbours, as a means of compelling her to consent to something else. Every open question in the negotiation remained as open as it ever had been-encumbered, perhaps, with

a new question, whether an additional act of unfairness had not been perpetrated. So soon, accordingly, as the citadel of Antwerp had surrendered, the whole course of negotiation was again commenced, and Holland showed as little inclination, as when the citadel was in her power, to submit to any conditions inconsistent with her interest or honour. In the beginning of January, the cabinets of St. James and the Tuilleries, presented to Holland, not another demand instantly to sign the definitive treaty, but a project of convention to endure till that measure could be accomplished. By this convention it was proposed that, within ten days after its ratification, Belgium should be put in possession of the forts on the Scheldt, below Antwerp, still occupied by the Dutch

the two Courts procuring the simultaneous evacuation by the Belgians of Veuloo, the Dutch · portion of Limburg, and the German part of Luxembourg; that the navigation of the Meuse should be opened, subject to the tariff of the Rhine; that the navigation of the Scheldt should continue free, as it was said to have

been since 20th January, 1831; that the commercial communications of Belgium with Germany, by way of Limburg, should be uninterrupted, and the roads to Germany through Maestricht and Sittard subjected to no tolls, or other obstacles to commerce; that, in the districts to be evacuated by the Belgian troops, no person should be prosecuted for his participation in previous political events; that there should be a complete armistice between the two countries, Holland pledging itself to acknowledge the neutrality of Belgium, and to reduce her army to a peaceestablishment within a month after the ratification of this convention, on an engagement that Belgium should adopt the same step; and that, on the exchange of the ratifications, England and France would remove their embargoes, and restore the detained vessels and their cargoes to the proprietors. Finally, the two Courts pledged themselves to draw up a definitive treaty between Holland and Belgium, in which Austria, Prussia, and Russia, would be invited to

concur.

There were many things in this project to which Holland would not accede, and which, above all, she considered peculiarly unfitted to be the subjects of a mere preliminary convention, however suitably they might find a place in discussions regarding a definitive treaty. Holland could not consent that there should be even a provisional convention leaving open the navigation of the Scheldt, and the commercial communications with Germany, and yet providing for no tolls whatever. Neither did she think it right, that such a convention should contain no provision for Belgium contributing, in the

mean time, towards payment of her share of the common debt. She could never admit the laying on of the embargo to have been a just or legal measure, and, therefore, could not consent that its removal should appear to be a concession for which something was be granted in return. There should be no trace of it in the convention, but it ought to be removed under an immediate arrangement, "for the self-denial of the Dutch cabinet could not go so far as to allow that the illegal proceedings adopted against it conferred upon their authors any right to put the recall of these proceedings in the balance, so as to demand new sacrifices from Holland." Holland, moreover, as an independent nation, could not submit to have prescribed to her by others the amount of military force which she ought to keep up, more especially when no definitive treaty had been concluded; and still less could the recognition of the independence of Belgium be made a condition of a preliminary convention. Of all results that was the one which could arise only after everything else should have been definitively settled. A recognition of Belgian independence as matters now stood, would be a recognition of it, without any equivalent advantage, or any guarantee to Holland. The Dutch cabinet, therefore, proposed a counter-project of a preliminary convention, making no mention of the recognition of Belgian independence, and containing no provision for the recall of the embargoes, or the reduction of the military establishments of Holland. It further provided, that Holland should levy a tonnage duty on the Scheldt, and a transit duty on the roads

through Limburg; and that France and England should engage that, till the conclusion of a final treaty, Belgium should pay annually 8,400,000 florins for its share of interest on the common debt.

These proposals Lord Palmerston and Prince Talleyrand utterly rejected. The right of levying duties on the Scheldt, it was said, was unaccompanied by any obligation as to pilotage, and placing buoys. The demand of a transit duty on the roads through Limburg was inadmissible, the five powers having already, by the treaty of Nov. 1831, granted the use of these roads to Belgium free of any duty, but what might be necessary to keep them in repair; and the demand for annual payments by Belgium was equally so, since, by the same treaty they had been assigned to Belgium. This was no answer to Holland, who was no party to that treaty, and in the face of whose demands that assignment had been made. The question with the Dutch was, whether what they asked was right and just. If they claimed only what they ought to obtain, the Courts could find no justification in the fact that they had bound themselves to Belgium to refuse it. The omission, too, of the embargoes, it was said, seemed to imply that Holland meant they should be removed without the ratification of any convention; and that there was no mention of the reduction of the military estab lishments of Holland could only mean, that it was to depend on a general disarming in Europe, and not on a simultaneous disarming in Holland and Belgium. The two Courts urged the Dutch envoy to enter on a negotiation to arrange

the definitive treaty; but this he declared he had no power to do; he was accredited only to the five powers, and by the five powers alone, who had formed the Conference, could a definitive treaty be concluded. The plan of a preliminary convention, therefore, was again resumed. Holland was willing to admit some modification of her proposals, but it was long before the parties could come to an agreement. The principal diffi culties lay in the stipulations regarding the rivers and roads on the one hand, and the armistice, and the acknowledgment of Belgian independence on the other., The two Courts proposed an altered convention, in which, instead of the territories being evacuated, the possession should remain reciprocally as it was, till the conclusion of the definitive treaty, which would render unnecessary the stipulations regarding the roads through Limburg. The disarming was to be given up; but the acknowledgment of the independence of Belgium, and the establishment of an armistice were retained; and the opening of the Meuse, on which the Dutch still held the fortress of Maestricht, was insisted on as indispensable. Holland would not accept these terms as they were proposed. the 14th of February, the ministers of France and England addressed a note to the Dutch cabinet, recapitulating the different steps by which they said they had laboured to bring the negotiation to a close, and insisting that Holland had impeded all attempts by proposing conditions which she knew to be inadmissible. The Dutch minister answered that Holland was the only party that had reason to complain. If England and France

On