'HEN France, in 1826, expressed her disapprobation of the conduct of Spain towards Portugal, by recalling her ambassador from the court, and her Swiss guards from around the person of his Most Catholic Majesty, she had only followed the dictates of sound policy, and displayed a sincere desire for the preservation of peace. But there was still a powerful party in France, who thought that the interests and honour of the empire lay in an opposite direction. They were the friends of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny in their own country; they hated, no less than did Ferdinand and his Camarilla, the probable progress of a different system on the banks of the Tagus. So far were they from thinking, that the insidious plottings, and open armaments of Spain against Portugal, could justly expose the former to be abandoned by France, that they considered it a duty, which France owed to legitimacy

and to Europe, to unite cordially with Spain, even at the expense of a war with England, in aiding the exertions of the Portuguese rebels. To the cause of Chaves, and his associated traitors, they devoted their talents, and their political influence; the columns of their public prints in Paris were the official, though lying, records of his marches and exploits. Their friends did not seem to have much weight in the French government, in so far as only ostensible offices were to be considered; but they possessed beside and behind the throne, in the closet and in the confessional, a power which threatened to counteract that of the ministry itself. They had already manifested this secret, but most effective, authority, in the conduct of their minion De Moustiers, the minister at the court of Madrid. Obedient to their commands, because confident that they were able to protect him against any substantial disgrace, that person had

violated the instructions of his sovereign, and given his countenance to Ferdinand, through all the windings of his Portuguese policy. Although his official superiors had found themselves compelled to disclaim his conduct by recalling him from his mission, even they were unable to prevent his concealed superiors from breaking his fall. De Moustiers on his return could scarcely complain of having lost the countenance of his master; he was received, and not coldly received, by his majesty, and continued his political activity in another sphere. The known existence, therefore, of this influence, caused many apprehensions to be entertained, that the true disposition of France might still be warlike, and gave double importance to the language which the king might use in addressing the chambers, which were to meet on the 14th of December.

The royal speech on that occasion, and still more the language with which it was followed up, in both chambers, by the French ministers, dissipated these fears. The king, referring to what had taken place between Spain and Portugal, expressed himself thus, "I receive from all foreign governments the assurance of the most amicable dispositions-dispositions which are entirely conformable to my own sentiments for the maintenance of peace. Disturbances have recently broken out in one part of the peninsula. I shall unite my efforts with those of my allies to put an end to them, and to prevent all their consequences." The explanations given, and the views propounded by ministers were much more frank and ample than the generalities of a king's speech, allowed to be put into the royal

mouth. They plainly accused Spain of unjustifiable aggression towards Portugal, as well as of disrespect towards France; and they justified the conduct of England in sending troops to Lisbon. They stated that, on the occupation of Spain by the French army in 1823, England had obtained from France a promise that no hostile attempt should be made against Portugal, and had declared herself bound to come to the assistance of that power, if it should be attacked. On the other hand, when the troubles broke out in Portugal in 1826, England had come under a similar obligation for the security of Spain, pledging herself to take care that no act of hostility should be committed on the part of Portugal, provided Portugal was not assailed by Spain. England had been faithful to this engagement; but Spain had violated the compact by which she was bound, or by which, at least, if it should be violated by England or Portugal, the other powers of Europe were bound to interfere in her behalf. "At the very moment," said the foreign minister, Count de Damas, in the Chamber of Peers, "at the very moment when the cabinet of Spain was giving assurances, that the arms taken from the Portuguese refugees should be given up to the Portuguese government; at the moment when orders were given that the refugees themselves should be removed from the frontiers, these men entered Portugal in arms; and this sudden attack was accompanied by circumstances which leave no doubt as to the cooperation of some of the Spanish authorities, who had been charged with the execution of the order to disarm and disperse the refugees among the interior provinces.

France, which had the greatest reason to prevent all hostilities on the part of Spain, which had the most right to be listened to, whose intervention should have inspired Portugal and England with the greatest security as to the fulfilment of the engagements of the Spanish cabinet-could not remain indifferent to events which displayed, in a manner so evident, either contempt for its counsels, or the impotence of its influence; and the king's government had immediately to testify its disapprobation by recalling its ambassador from Madrid, France does not contest with England the right resulting from its duty-the right imposed on it by a long series of treaties, to go to the aid of Portugal. It will continue its efforts to prevent the renewal of acts which have authorized the measures taken by the British Cabinet; it will omit nothing to prevent a rupture between Spain and Portugal, and it hopes to succeed; it has already taken, with regard to the Cabinet of Madrid, in concert with all its allies, steps the most likely to attain this object. It continues to receive from the British Cabinet the most positive assurances of its entire co-operation. Nothing which has taken place up to the latest events, authorizes the king's government to raise any doubts on the sincerity of these assurances : on their part, the ministers of the king are firmly determined to advise his majesty to refuse his support to the Spanish government, if, by its own fault, it puts Por tugal under the necessity of assuming a hostile attitude towards it. -France cannot, then, be reduced

renounce the advantages of peace, except by circumstances which we are far from foreseeing.

Her good faith and her dignity would not permit her to support unjust and passionate acts, which have taken place only in contempt of counsels which have been given and promises which have been made."

But the justice, the moderation, the dignity, of these sentiments were far from securing the unanimous approbation of the chambers. The French ministers found that the events in Portugal had given to three very different classes of adversaries, different subjects of reproach, The ultra-royalists, in the first place, openly accused them of having abandoned their duty in deserting Ferdinand, and scarcely concealed their opinion that France ought to have given Spain cordial, active, and efficient, assistance in crushing the constitu tion of Portugal. That constitution itself, again, they represented as the creature of English influ, ence, framed for the very purpose of securing that influence, and imported with the view of extending the same influence to Spain by keeping the threat of constitutional inoculation hanging over her in terrorem. The rage against England, to which these persons gave vent, was intemperate in the extreme, and was only equalled by their ludicrous ignorance of her policy and interests, or by their exaggerated misrepresentations of her motives. They taunted the ministry with having renounced the holy alliance, to patch up a treaty with England, and with having thus pusillanimously abandoned their own proper course, to follow schemes of English policy in the wake of the English cabinet. In their love of arbitrary institutions, they even were less regardful of national gratitude than was decent; and, for

getting that England had received into her hospitable haven the wandering princes and royalists of France, inveighed against her bitterly for having afforded an asylum to the exiled constitutionalists of Spain. Britain, they said, was not actuated, in her present defence of Portugal, by any love of free institutions or any regard to the faith of treaties, but solely by a desire to extort from Ferdinand, by the dread of a revolution, a recognition of the in dependence of his American colonies, which independence again would foster her own commercial influence, and extend her commercial monopolies. This notable discovery was thus propounded by M. de la Bourdonnaye: "The question for England is, not whether she shall reign in a part of the Peninsula; she aspires to domineer over the whole of it; and if she was not under the necessity of causing a revolution to establish her influence at Lisbon, she required one to agitate Spain, to loosen all the ties of obedience, to inspire the government with terror, and extort by fear what she could not obtain by the importunities of diplomacy-namely, the emancipation of America, and the acquiescence of the monarch in making important modifications in the forms of his government. For, always faithful to her policy, it is by changes in constitutions that she divides and weakens nations, to establish more easily her empire."

The more moderate royalists did not join in these extravagant doctrines; they neither lamented the fate of Ferdinand, compelled for once to be prudent and just, nor did they indulge in ludicrous and impotent abuse of England; but still they, too, had their causes of complaint and these causes were

neither more nor less than certain ardent expressions in Mr. Can ning's speech in the House of Commons on the 12th December. Mr. Canning had spoken of the occupation of Spain by France in 1823, as an incumbrance to the latter power which he could have prevented if he had thought fit, but which he had rendered harm less by the separation of the Indies from the crown of Castile, and which, as he had foreseen, had be come, in its consequences, a source of much embarrassment to France, burdening her with grievous expense, and bestowing not an atom of substantial power. He had spoken, too, in terms most true and most eloquent, though not perhaps so prudent as diplomatic civility requires, of the tremendous power which Britain could wield in a war of opinion, when all the troubled spirits of all the countries of Europe would crowd around her standard, if she would but condescend to use them. To French ears all this sounded very like a threat, in one part, and, in another, very like a no less galling assumption of superiority in political management; it wounded their pride; it went counter to their prejudices; it irritated men who had neither approved of the invasion of Spain by France, nor now approved of the invasion of Portugal by Spain; and more speeches than one were delivered in the French chambers as regular and formal answers to passages of that which Mr. Canning had spoken in the British House of Commons. M. de Chateaubriand, in particular, made a set oration to show how

imprudently the British minister would act in doing what the British minister had never proposed to do-entering into an active al

liance with the spirit of insurrection all over the globe. The ultra party were much less temperate; they denominated the speech an open insult to their country; they asked, what sort of an ally that must be, whose friendship was shown only in insolent menaces; and M. Bouville seriously proposed, that the chamber of deputies should address the king of France against some stray sentences of the eloquent effusion of the English statesman. They must have been very uncandid and very blinded men, who could believe that any thing like insult was in the mind of Mr. Canning, or who, after making allowance for the warmth of expression which unavoidably accompanies a fervid spirit in a popular assembly, could find any substantial ground of complaint, even in his words.

The liberal party, too,-the regular opposition-found in the existing state of things between Portugal and Spain, ground of complaint against their adversaries, the ministers. According to them, the confusion arose simply from the system of government established in Spain, and the determination of Ferdinand that no wandering ray of civil liberty should illumine the palpable darkness around him; and, in so thinking, they were very far from being wrong. They blamed, therefore, the French ministers for the existing confusion, because these minis ters, they said, ought to have compelled Ferdinand, by the influence of their alliance, and the military occupation of his country, to place Spain under the protection of popular institutions. According to the confession of the ministers themselves, promises had been made to France, and these promises had been

broken. The honour of France had thus been compromised. Europe would hardly believe that France had so little influence with Ferdinand, as to be unable to prevent him from rushing into a mad war against her allies-Ferdinand, whom she alone maintained upon his throne, and the very tranquillity of whose kingdom depended on the presence of her armies. If, again, it was true that France, notwithstanding all she had done, and was doing, for his Catholic majesty, was so unutterably impotent in his cabinet, the matter of offence was no less grave, although the sincerity of the government was saved. French influence, it appeared, had been sufficient to obtain promises; but now it had not been sufficient to prevent their violation, or to obviate the danger of France being plunged into a mischievous and useless war, because the creature of her power laughed at her advice or remonstrances, and made sport of the engagements in which he had bound himself to her. Pledges, therefore, were wanted; and absolute power could not give them; that had been tried in Spain during the last four years. Great pains had been taken to free the Spanish government from all control; if it had not been encouraged by France, it had at least been left in complete leisure, to spread exile and death among its foes; a French army had submitted to the mournful duty of acting as its sentinels, while it sated its vengeance. Yet the result was, that, even according to the professions of the Spanish government, the king of Spain was unable to command the obedience of his own officers. It was only the introduction of a legal and constitutional government, that could re-establish and