PAIN, until in the latter part of the year she attracted the attention of every European court by her intrigues against the establishment of a representative government in Portugal, had no occurrence in her foreign policy worthy of being commemorated, and exhibited, in her domestic condition, the same inquisitorial system of tyranny, the same endless fears of discontent and danger, the same hopeless prostration of all thought and action before bigotry and despotism, which had formed her history from the restoration of Ferdinand to absolute power. By the surrender of Callao, in Peru, to the revolutionists, she lost the last foot of ground which remained to her in South America; but she still obstinately refused to acknowledge the independence of her revolted colonies, or to enter into commercial connexions with them, which might have been to her some compensation for the loss of their allegiance. She still made empty vaunts of her inalienable supremacy over these distant countries, and still more empty threats of using force to assert it, while the pirates of Algiers, and the privateers of Colombia, were insulting her coasts, and capturing her mer

chantmen in the very mouth of their harbours. The wretched state of the finances occasioned her failing to pay a stipulated sum of six millions of reals to the Dey of Algiers; and the barbarian immediately sent his corsairs to sea, and paralyzed for a time the whole trade of Catalonia and Valencia. So early as April, Colombian privateers appeared in the Mediterranean, harassed the commerce of Cadiz, and made several prizes; others were cruising with equal success on the northeastern coasts. Spain was reduced to too low a state to revenge the insults; and even the steam-boat between Cadiz and Gibraltar was forced, for a while, to abandon her voyages. These privateers did not always respect the usages of war; other flags than those of Spain were occasionally exposed to their aggressions.

Too feeble to resent insult from without, Spain was equally deprived of all comfort and respectability within. What with the necessities and jealousies of the government, and the violences of organized banditti, neither life nor liberty nor property were secure for an instant; a social order could

scarcely be said to exist; since every thing which rendered it comfortable and respectable had fled. The finances were ruined, the population was impoverished, commerce scarcely raised its head; the priesthood were jealous, well paid, and absolute; the government was solely occupied with cares of police, extinguishing every latent spark of enlightened thought, and guarding against the possible return of banished revolutionists, or the importation of foreign liberals. Superstitious belief, slavish terrors, and Spanish gravity-a king without either heart or head, a ministry without talent or independence, an inquisition without principle or humanity-a profligate and poor aristocracy-a selfish, dark, and tyrannical, priesthood-a populace whose only energies were reserved for outraging the laws, and converting the country into a den of thieves a military force setting itself above the restraints of discipline, and, reckoning on the credit of its being indispensable to the court, letting loose its licentious ness on friends and foes-in the maritime, and once commercial cities, great aptitude for revolt every where else an utter listlessness and indifference to political matters, the mark of a people sunk to the lowest degree of political debasement, and knowing no spring of political conduct except abject fear these were the elements which now constituted the monarchy of Ferdinand 7th.

A pasquinade, pasted up in the streets of Madrid, in defiance of the vigilance of the police, thus described the state of the country: "Nothing is wanting to thy happiness, my dear country; thou hast monks and locusts--the police; ports without ships, troops without

breeches, a brilliant priesthood, high roads infested by banditti, an exhausted treasury, the country divided into parties of all colours; a king who is not ignorant of it, but who does not dare to do any thing; a paper currency which is worth more than it ought to be: nothing was wanting to thee but a holy year, and the pope has hastened to grant it."

In the beginning of the year the king changed the constitution of his council and gave it a new name. The Consultative Junta was dissolved, and a new body installed in its place, under the appellation of the Permanent Great Council, which was to deliberate and decide upon all proposed measures, and control the ministers in their various departments. Neither the men nor their system was changed; the duke del Infantado was still at the head of the ministry, and cardinal Inguanzo, now appointed archbishop of Toledo, was the first councillor named. The framers of this council, whether with a view to improve its policy by giving it more stability, or merely to secure the continuance of their own power, prevailed upon the king to sanction as a fundamental principle of its institution, that its members should not be removeable at pleasure-that they should not be dismissed, or exiled from the capital, except for crimes duly proved, and by an express order of the sovereign. This was a scheme to protect themselves against each other's intrigues, and to resist perhaps the influence of those menials of the king, who, without ostensible power, formed in reality his privy council; and yet within a few months, the duke del Infantado himself was under the necessity of resigning. A man gains little by securing the

discord and distrust.

The pretended amnesty, clogged with vague exceptions of whole classes so ill defined that a man could scarcely tell whether or not he was included, had destroyed all confidence: no one who had in any way contributed to raise the troops, or took any share in proclaiming the constitution throughout the kingdom, but was in hourly danger of being called to account for by-gone iniquities, in which nearly the whole population had participated. M. Burgos, in a memorial addressed to the king, in the beginning of the year, on the best means of winning back the departed prosperity and tranquillity of the country, said, with much truth and boldness: "The first mean is a full and absolute amnesty, to all, without exceptions; or, if there be exceptions, they must be few, personal, and distinctly named. To fear danger from an amnesty is to tremble at a phantom. Men, whose severity is offended if criminals are not punished, will perhaps maintain that the impunity of certain royalists might encourage excesses, and lead to new convulsions. I entreat your majesty not to yield to this melancholy scruple. Justice is already satisfied with the leaders of the rebellion having died on the scaffold. Three years of proscription and misfortune have sufficiently punished those who took part in the errors and disorders of the late period. Policy authorizes and prescribes exceptions to the ordinary rules of justice, when crowds have been guilty: when punishment is impossible, pardon or oblivion is necessary." This was honest, wise, and humane advice, but it was lost upon Ferdinand and his ministers. Forty thousand

families were said to have already been driven into exile in consequence of their connexion with political events, and they had carried forth with them almost all the capital and enterprise of the country. A number of citizens of Barcelona, who were suspected of having once favoured the constitution, or who had consented to hold offices under its reign, when Ferdinand himself consented to hold his crown under it, were ordered to leave the city within four-andtwenty hours, and betake themselves to particular places of restraint specially assigned to them. Not a moment's delay was allowed them for preparation, and their entreaties to be allowed to quit the kingdom were disregarded. The criminal tribunal of Seville passed sentence of death upon about seventy of the deputies who had voted for the establishment of a regency in 1823, but fortunately only four or five of them were in the hands of that tardy justice which had kept them up for three years, as if afraid lest victims should fail for her periodical festivals of blood. General Capape had long been imprisoned on suspicion of being accessory to an insurrection similar to that of Bessieres. At length he was brought to trial before the Supreme Council of war, on the 10th of April. A minority of the court were for finding him guilty, and passing sentence of death; but the majority voted that he ought to be acquitted, and re-instated in his former honours. The king, however, in the face of this judgment of the Court, sentenced him to be banished to the West-Indian island of Porto Rico, and to be confined in St. Sebastian till a vessel should be found to transport him. The

police on the frontiers was every where rendered more strict: by a special ordinance, all persons, whatsoever, entering the kingdom, whether suspected or not, were ordered to be arrested, till their conduct should be examined, and the purpose of their journey ascertained. It was particularly added, "the king's pleasure is, that this measure be extended even to all persons who have returned with lawful permission." At the same time ministerial circulars were issued, rousing the vigilance of the public officers not only to watch all books to be imported, but again to set to work, and examine all books already imported, calling upon the clergy to make use of the pulpit and the confessional to enforce the giving up of prohibited works; and (as if to remove every shadow of social confidence, and hold out premiums for the gratification of lying and malicious informers), to enforce, by these mighty engines of a superstitious creed, "the duty of informing, with the greatest secresy" against persons who shall not give up such books. The confessor was to compel a man, by threats of eternal perdition, to deliver up to the Inquisition a relation or a friend who was guilty of the enormity of possessing a Bible, or a volume of Voltaire. Nothing could better illustrate the fears and jealousies of the government than the instructions given to the police after the promulgation of the constitutional charter in Portugal. By these instructions, the subaltern intendants of police were to make up lists of all persons who came under the descriptions of being attached to the constitutional system, having been national volunteers of infantry or cavalry, members of sacred battalions or com

panies, reputed free-masons, known for communeros, considered liberal, exaltados, or moderates, and purchasers of national or secularized property. These lists were likewise to specify, whether any individual had been a member of the Supreme Junta of the government of Madrid, a minister, a member of any tribunal or court of justice, a deputy from any province to the Cortes, or a secretary, a political chief, or employed on any other service, a member or curator of any political society, or a political writer. Any other thing, which might give a correct idea of the true opinions held by such individual during the prevalence of the constitution, was to be added; as well as an explanation of his conduct from the downfall of the constitution, and of the influence which he had possessed, and might have in the government, in consequence of his fortune. When any person, contained in these infamous lists, or any of his children, or servants, applied for a passport to leave the district, the general intendant was immediately to be informed of the fact, and of the suspicions to which the journey might give rise. No passport was to be given to a person "marked as attached to the constitutional system," without satisfying the police that he had good reasons for travelling. His passport, if he received one, was to specify the places through which he was to pass, and at which he was to stop in going or returning; and this specification was to serve as a notice to the authorities in these places

"to have an eye upon his conduct." As if false informers could never be too numerous, or be too highly bribed, a reward of a thousand reals was promised to every police officer who should denounce