politics might tilt about the gold and silver sides of the shield, like the knights in the apologue.

Meanwhile, beset by insolent subjects, who totally misunderstood the spirit of constitutional government, which, like every other science, is not to be learned in a day, the repose of John VI. was further disturbed by a letter from his elder son, Don Pedro, whom he had left in Brazil as regent of those countries.

The popular mind has been wildly agitated by the views presented by the one or the other of these two parties, and his Majesty's government has been alternately attacked by those who would even plunge them into a war for the chastisement of the usurper Miguel, and by those who accuse them of wanton breaches of neutrality and undue partiality for Pedro. In the heat and anger of prolonged discussion, the public has lost sight of the original points of the matter in dispute, and our present object is to state these in a clear, concise manner, without leaning to Miguelite or Pedroite, and abstaining from declamatory exaggeration. King John VI., when driven from Portugal by the arms of Napoleon, retired with the whole of his family to his extensive colonies in the Brazils. This family then consisted of his queen, a violent and bigoted woman, sister to his present Majesty of Spain, of two sons, Pedro and Miguel, and two or three daughters. John VI. was a true king of the old continental school-of that school, whose radical defects alone can account for the facility with which Buonaparte disposed of the sovereigns that had been nurtured in it; he was indolent, short-sighted, and though timid, had a high notion of the royal prerogative. In other times, he, like several of his contemporaries, might have peaceably slumbered through a long reign, and have left his country neither much better nor much worse for his government; but he was not fitted to steer through the unprecedented difficulties of the nineteenth century, or to adopt and guide those new doctrines in politics which have penetrated into all parts of the world.

When the Portuguese, aided by the British, had boldly expelled the French invaders, and when Napoleon, the dethroner of many kings, was himself dethroned, and peace restored to Europe, John VI. remained in America, and there, probably, he would have ended his days, had not the spirit of revolution crossed the Atlantic, and the phantom of a constitution frightened him away. Yet, in his European states, he had to face the same object of his terror and dislike, and habited, be it said, in its least attractive garb.

Under an imbecile regency, which allowed the army to lose all its organization and discipline, imitating the conduct of the Spaniards, on the 23rd of August, 1820, a Portuguese colonel, and a few other military men at Oporto, revolted, declaring that the nation must have a constitution, and within three weeks, a lieutenant, with a handful of men, marched into Lisbon, and without any show of opposition, proclaimed a constitution in that Capital.

We must not let our reverence for a word blind us to the nature of a thing. This constitution, thus suddenly imposed, was anything rather than suitable to the Portuguese nation, and the conduct of the Cortes was characterized by folly, illiberality, and, weakness, which soon alienated all parties. These men, to whom all the miseries that have ensued are mainly attributable, bullied the priesthood while they dreaded its power, and treated with indecent, and most impolitic, disrespect the old king, who, whatever might have been his degree of sincerity, testified respect, and even zeal for the constitution they had established. In short, they rendered the words Cortes and Constitution odious to the Portuguese people; and time, and the measures of wiser men, will be still required to remove this deeply-rooted popular antipathy.

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Seven months after this declaration, however, Don Pedro, when Brazil was de facto dissevered from Portugal, and to all intents and purposes an independent state, accepted in behalf of himself and children, the office of "Constitutional Emperor of Brazil." This was in May, 1822. The following year, when France chose to interfere with the internal government of Spain, and overthrow the Spanish constitution by force of arms, the constitution of Portugal, its sickly progeny fell to the ground, with no more efforts on the part of the nation for its support, than had been made against its establishment; and the only praise that can possibly be given to it is, that it rose and fell without bloodshed. It appears, however, from two royal decrees, published at the time, that John VI. contemplated giving some sort of representative government to Portugal, and it would have been a work of no great difficulty to have devised a better system than the one that had been adopted by the despised Cortes. To oppose this, the queen and Don Miguel, with the Marquisses Chaves and Abrantes, and the whole of the apostolic or Spanish faction, who had hastened the crisis of the late Cortes, employed all their energies. The queen, whom the members of that Cortes had declared mad by a majority of votes, and had placed in confinement, entertained abhorence for every thing that approached a representative government, and this feeling was common to Don Miguel, and a numerous and powerful portion of the Portuguese nation. A crime of the blackest die rests on this party, and is supposed to have been their first step towards defeating the king's project of another constitution. That unlucky sovereign went to hunt at Salva-terra, and among other courtiers took with him the Marquis of Loulé, who was well known to be a powerful advocate of reform. Don Miguel, the Marquis of Abrantes, and two men of bad reputation, Cordeiro and Verissimo, since employed by Miguel in his police, were also of the party. Two days after their arrival at Salva-terra, the lifeless body of the Marquis of Loulé was found upon a heap of rubbish! The young prince and Miguel was then only in his twentysecond year-shewed a strange alacrity in asserting that the Marquis had fallen from a window, but on examining the body it was found that a dagger or some other instrument had been thrust through the mouth into the brain of the noble victim! The old king fled in dismay to Lisbon, and Don Miguel put himself at the head of the demoralized army-that army that had made and unmade a constitution-and that now declared itself for the prince, thẹ queen, and absolutism! The undutiful son had a war-ery which found an echo in the superstitious priest-ridden people. The revolutionary proceedings in Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont, had all been prepared by secret societies bearing different names and constitutions, but pretending for the most part to some sort of connection with free-masonry. Now these, all and severally, had just boen anathematized by the pope, and the members composing them subjected to one general sentence of excommunication. At the same time, throughout the south of Europe, monks and priests, acting as missionaries, were going from place to place preaching against this free-masonry, as a sin more damnable than atheism, which was represented as being only one of its component vices, and all revolutionists or constitutionalists were declared to be free-masons, carbonari, &c. &c. Only an eye-witness can form a correct opinion of the effect produced by these missions on the minds of a fanatic, passionate people. At one of these preachings

in the streets of Naples, an unfortunate man whom the malice or mad zeal of a monk denounced as having been a capo-carbonaro, was nearly torn to pieces by the infuriated populace. Now the Portuguese mob is every whit as fanatic, and as easily excited as the Neapolitan, and consequently when Miguel and his partizans shouted in their ears, "Death to the thunderbolts of masonic impiety," he found a ready echo, and spell-bound them to his party.

While asserting that all he did was to secure the absolute power of his virtuous and revered father, he took possession of the palace with the soldiery and the mob, and made that father a prisoner. He issued orders that all his father's servants, ministers, and personal friends should be arrested, and drew up a list of proscriptions of fearful length. From this affectionate son, the old king contrived to escape. Among his subjects he knew not whom to trust; he was by constitution and habit a timid man, and he fled to a British man-of-war, the "Windsor Castle," then at anchor in the Tagus. Here he not only enjoyed safety, but he contrived to entrap the author of all his recent misfortunes. How so astucious a person as Miguel allowed himself to be so duped, is not clearly explained; but he was entrapped on board the "Windsor Castle," and thence sent into exile. The place appointed for his residence was Vienna, whose atmosphere should not seem to be the best for inspiring a love of constitutional government. The facts which we have simply stated without comment—a murder, a revolt, a son in arms against his father, and his father's gaolera proscription, are styled by the Quarterly Review*, with an obtuseness to moral feeling, which astonishes us even in an ultra-party writer, "a series of family squabbles and political intrigues," of which it is implied Miguel was the

victim and not the author.

After the dismissal of his troublesome son, John VI. publicly removed his wife from court; granted a general amnesty, excluding, however, from its benefits the Marquis of Abrantes, Verissimo, and Cordeiro, the associates of Miguel, and the murderers of Loulé. He established moreover two liberal ministries, the first under Palmella and Pamplona, the second under Barrados and Lacerda; but these were odious to Spain, and not much to the taste of the Holy Alliance. They therefore soon fell to the ground, and the absolutists again flattered themselves with a prospect of ascendency. That distinguished diplomatist, Sir W. A Court (now Lord Heytesbury) can, of course, give satisfactory explanations of the line of conduct he pursued while ambassador, at this time, at Lisbon, and probably it was only his curious destiny, that he should be "in at the death of three constitutions in succession, viz., those of Naples, Spain, and Portugal. However this may be, no more talk was heard of charters and of cortes.

In March 1826, John VI. died, and now we are come to the points at issue between Don Miguel and his elder brother.

In the treaty of separation between Brazil and Portugal, which was finally completed by Sir Charles Stuart, the existence of Brazil as an independent empire was fully recognized and established. The empty title of "Emperor of Brazil" was to be borne by John VI. as long as he lived, but the office and full power of emperor were to rest with Don Pedro, his eldest son, to whom also was preserved the right of succession to the throne of Portugal.

We shall treat the brothers in the order of seniority, and first make out Don Pedro's case as he and his advocates represent it. According to this shewing, on the death of his father, Don Pedro, as elder son, did lawfully and actually succeed to the European dominions of the House of Braganza, and was recognized as King of Portugal and the Algarves, as well as Emperor of Brazil, by the members of his family, and the different states of Europe and America. Soon finding, however, that the disseverment of Brazil and Portugal was of such a nature as not to admit of the rule of one and the same sovereign, he resolved to make a choice of one of the two states for himself, and to transfer his hereditary right in the other to a child of his own. He chose Brazil, and made a formal renunciation of Portugal in favour of his eldest daughter Donna Maria, whose heirs were to succeed her in her independent rights to that throne. At this time the Emperor of Brazil had one son, younger than his daughter Donna Maria; and this prince, Don Sebastiano, was to inherit the rights of his father Don Pedro in the American empire. * No. xcviii, July, 1833.

Pedro's abdication of Portugal carried two conditions along with it; 1st. That a constitutional charter should be granted to the Portuguese nation; 2nd. That the young Queen of Portugal, Donna Maria, should espouse her uncle Don Miguel. Well known as all the conduct of that prince must have been to Don Pedro, it was a bold step in him, as a father, to entrust the happiness of a daughter to such keeping; but he was a brother as well as a father, and Miguel by this time figured as a sobered and repentant young man. Besides, it seemed the best mode of uniting parties and reconciling enmities which had so distracted the unhappy Portuguese kingdom. Don Miguel was at once to return from his exile at Vienna to Lisbon, and to have the title of Lord-Lieutenant in Portugal.

Pedro's constitution was promulgated in Portugal, and was joyfully accepted by a majority of the more enlightened portion of that nation; but (we still state his case on his own, or his friends' showing) the temperate provisions of the charter disappointed the ultra-masonic-liberal party, composed of the fanatics of a theoretical and impracticable freedom; and the very name of constitution was as hateful as ever to the other extreme party or the fanatics of catholicism and absolutism. Thus two violent extremes were hostile to the new system. It would not have been difficult to deal with the enthusiasts of one of these parties, who had no hold on the popular mind or the sympathies of the Portuguese people; but it was far different with the other party, which included the queen-mother, the church, and consequently the mob, and could count on the support of Spain and the complacence of most of the great continental powers. The priests and monks proceeded again in their anti-constitutional functions, and the absolutists confounded, with great art and treachery, the present charter of Don Pedro with that of the late Cortes, the object of popular detestation. They falsified many of the clauses of the new constitution, and industriously circulated their forgery as the provisions and words of Pedro.

All this time Don Miguel remained at Vienna, affecting a reluctance to embark on the troubled sea of politics, or to return as Lord-Lieutenant to his native country; and he persevered in a semblance of truly exemplary submission and affection. In April, 1826, about a month after his father's death, he wrote a letter to his sister, Donna Maria Isabella, then Regent of Portugal, in which he expressed his desires that Portugal would be tranquil, and his dear brother, the Emperor of Brazil, as lawful heir and successor to the thrones, see all his wishes accomplished. He was also fearful that some evil-disposed persons might make use of his name to excite troubles, to counteract which, he entreated his sister, the regent, to give publicity to this his letter. In May of the same year he wrote a similar dutiful and most affectionate epistle to his brother Don Pedro; and again, in the month of June, another letter to his sister in the same tone as his last to her; on the 4th of October, he solemnly and publicly swore to observe and maintain the constitution of Portugal as granted by Don Pedro; and finally, on the 29th of October, he contracted, in the presence of the whole Austrian court, a solemn affiance with Donna Maria II., Queen of Portugal!

Contemporary with these proceedings at Vienna, in Portu gal Miguel's friends, the Marquesses of Chaves and Abrantes, raised the standard of revolt, and established a regency at Tariva, to act in behalf of KING Miguel. This movement was encouraged by Spain, who permitted the Portuguese refugees of the Apostolic party to gather on her own frontiers, and thence attack their country. It is said, moreover, that Spain furnished arms and money, and that the troops that poured into Portugal for this horrid warfare were not all Portuguese. It was at this crisis that our ministry, then directed by the lamented Mr. Canning, sent over an English army which soon restored tranquillity to the unhappy kingdom, though it could not, and did not, eradicate the hatred of Don Pedro's charter in the two extreme violent parties already mentioned.

The death of Mr. Canning, in August 1827, seems to have had the immediate effect of reviving the confidence of the anti-constitutionalists. Don Miguel, convinced, it is said, by the representations of the Austrian minister, Prince Metternich, saw, all at once, the propriety of returning to Portugal, passing through England in his way. Accordingly, he set out from Vienna with the title of Regent," which had been substituted by Metternich, some time before, for that of "Lord-Lieutenant," On what law

Before he left Vienna, however, Don Miguel wrote to the King of Spain, requesting that monarch to restrain the rebellious proceedings of the Marquess of Chaves-his bosom friend, who had proclaimed him king!

On his arrival in England, Miguel pledged himself to George IV. to execute in all points the dispositions of his brother Pedro regarding Portugal, to maintain the constitution, &c. &c. He induced the late Lord Dudley, then Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to hasten the final acts connected with the resignation of the Portgueuse throne by his brother, and to delay the withdrawing of the British forces from Lisbon. He contrived to raise the sum of 200,000l. in London, and then set sail for Lisbon, where he landed on the 22nd of February, 1828, with fresh protestations of loyalty and constitutionalism on his lips. Yet, within a very few days after his landing, Sir F. Lamb, our ambassador, saw such grounds for doubting the intentions of the prince, that he boldly withheld from him the sum of money that had been raised for him in England.

We hasten over the hurried events that followed-they have nothing to do with the question of right. Miguel was received with raptures by what was decidedly the strongest party in the Portuguese nation, and he recalled the Marquess of Chaves, and his adherents, who had found a friendly asylum in Spain. In the conclaves of the devotees his affairs were soon settled, and this under the very nose of the English army that had been sent by Mr. Canning for the support of constitutional freedom. In a very short time the press of Lisbon teemed with eulogiums of Miguel, who was likened to the archangel Michael; and his right to the throne of Portugal, to the exclusion of his niece and affianced bride, Donna Maria, was openly asserted. At the same time the pulpit, infinitely more influential than the press in Portugal, resounded with his praises, and with denunciations of the whole Masonic, i. e., the Constitutional party. So early as the 26th April, Miguel received addresses from sundry assemblies of absolutists, inviting him to assume the crown; and the prince, in a reply in which he used the royal style for the first time, called these "faithful addresses." He then convoked, by a royal circular, the ancient Cortes of the country, ordering the different electoral presidents to refuse the votes of all those suspected of being inimical to the true principles of legitimacy, or admirers of new institutions, and to permit the election of those only "who had in view the service of God and of the Throne.' Such a Cortes did all that was expected from it, and Don Miguel ascended the throne not merely as king, but as ABSOLUTE king, in less than two months after his landing

at Lisbon.

We now take up the cause of Don Miguel as represented by his advocates. According to their showing, Don Pedro had no right to the throne himself, and consequently no faculty of remitting it to his daughter Donna Maria. To prove this they quote the laws of the Cortes of Lamego-the fundamental act of the Portuguese monarchy-which expressly provide that none but a Portuguese can inherit the crown of Portugal. To shape their facts to meet this ancient law, they assert that Don Pedro, by accepting the separate sovereignty of Brazil, and by declaring and waging war against Portugal, as he has done in America, has lost his nationality, and ceased to be a Portuguese. Further, they appeal to a more modern, but not less fundamental law of Portugal. This last law was promulgated by the King and the three estates of the realm, at the establishment of the kingdom under the house of Braganza in 1640, when (which they do not state) the motives which induced the limiting of the succession arose from fears that the crown of Portugal might again revert to Spain, the country which is now most urgent in support of a law which was meant for the perpetual exclusion of its princes from the Portuguese throne. The instrument referred to confirms the resolutions of the Cortes of Lamego generally, and the question of succession is explicitly determined in these words-" The succession of this kingdom shall not, at any time, come to a foreign prince, nor to his children, notwithstanding they may be the next of kin to the last king in possession." These words, say Don Miguel's advocates, seem to have been devised on purpose to meet the exact case. They insist that Don Pedro, though next of kin to John VI., has made himself a foreign prince, and thereby excluded him

"And further, when it happens that the sovereign of these realms of Portugal shall succeed to any larger kingdom or lordship, he shall always be bound to reside in this; and having two or more male children, the eldest shall succeed to the foreign kingdom, and the second, to this one of Portugal."

And again, continuing to draw from the same source, they say, that the instrument provides that in case the king has but one son, then Portugal shall be separated, and go to that son's children on the conditions before-mentioned; and in case the king leaves only daughters, then the eldest daughter shall succeed to Portugal, on condition of marrying a native Portuguese selected by the Cortes. And if such daughter do not fulfil this condition, then the Cortes shall elect a native Portuguese for their king. Having summed up all these arguments, Don Miguel's supporters maintain, that both the letter and spirit of these fundamental laws are decidedly in favour of that princethat the dominions of Portugal having been, during the lifetime of John VI., split into two distinct and independent realms, Don Pedro, as elder son, and his descendants, inherited Brazil, or the foreign kingdom; and that Don Miguel, as younger son, was legitimate successor to the throne of Portugal.