personalities of ambitious men, who have busied themselves in creating factions, and arming them against each other."

This is the picture which a revolutionist drew of Buenos Ayres; and the best symptom which has appeared during the revolution is, that there should be a man honest enough thus to describe it! He concluded by inferring that Buenos Ayres was not the country where rigorism (as he called it, to avoid a more obnoxious but more appropriate word,) could produce the good which was desired, or at least that this was not the time for trying it. It was not the time for trying it, because the government wanted strength rather than inclination, and so sensible were they of their unpopularity as well as of their danger, that they ordered all arms of every kind in the possession of the inhabitants to be delivered up; the punishment for concealment was to be 100 stripes in the public streets for the first offence, a fine of a thousand dollars, and four years of garrison duty, for the second, death for the third.

In all these proceedings there was enough to alarm the vigilance of Vigodet. When the gazettes affected to speak in true republican language, and when it was declared that the congress could not be assembled till the united provinces had recovered their liberty by the aid of the arms of Buenos Ayres, it was beyond all doubt that the leaders were determined to separate the colonies from the mother country, and that they had learnt in the French school to consider oaths and treaties only as instruments of their perfidious policy. They had refused to believe the recovery of Figueras when it was taken in so masterly a manner by Rovira; but when that fortress was lost again, the loss was blazoned as the death-blow of Spain;-" there was no remedy for her," they said; " she

had now expired, and they ought to forget her even as the dead are forgotten." On the other hand, the wildest accounts of the success of the revolutionists in Mexico were officially circulated; and at a time when Hidalgo had fallen under the sword of the law, it was affirmed that he had entered Mexico in triumph, at the head of 180,000 Americans, and that that capital had proclaimed its independence. Respecting England, the language even of the moderate editor was such as Buonaparte would have dictated. “England,” said he, "would rather constitute us her colonies upon the same footing as Brazil, than trade directly with us, and thus contribute to form our exist. ence as a nation. Her object is to establish an exclusive commerce in these regions. The domination of the Portugueze would easily put them in possession of some of the principal points on the eastern bank of this river, and in a situation to dictate the law to both sides. The captious conduct and the duplicity which this court has displayed, convinces us of the truth of this reflection. To this it is that we must attribute the criminal indifference with which she has forborne to relieve our most urgent necessities, and this is the true origin of the hostilities on the op. posite shore, and of the obstinate delinquency of Monte Video."

It was more easy to excite an alarm against the interference of the Portugueze than against the English cabinet; and accordingly the favourite cry was, that there existed an intrigue for delivering them over to the princess of Brazil. Upon this pretext troops were still kept on the opposite bank, waiting only for a favourable moment to renew hostilities; the people of Monte Video were told in the gazette that they were to be de livered over to the despotic pleasure of the despicable mercenaries, who trod

their soil under pretext of assisting them, and they were openly exhorted to imitate the example of Buenos Ayres, to take arms, and swear that they would be free. Their troops under Artigas committed great excesses, and it may well be supposed that the Brazilian forces were neither under the influence of better morals nor of better discipline; so that a country in which the last few years had produced some symptoms of improve ment, was miserably laid waste. At length the revolutionists finding it better to renew the war, if it were only

to call off the attention of the people from their domestic misconduct, called upon the governor of Monte Video to co-operate with Artigas in expelling the Portugueze. It was impossible that so shallow a pretence could impose upon him; he in reply, therefore, required that Artigas should retire beyond the Uruguay, and declared that he would not permit more troops to cross. Of course hostilities were renewed, and the year closed with every appearance of fresh revolutions and bloodier struggles.

ENGLAND was earnestly desirous of preserving peace in the Spanish colonies, and effecting a reconciliation with the mother-country, upon grounds which should be equally to the advantage of both; but the good wishes of England were frustrated in Spain by the predominant influence of men as suspicious as they were selfish, and in America by the determination of the independent party to effect their object by any means. There was another country where England possessed the power of interfering with effect, and where her benevolent and beneficial interference, which had been withheld too long, was at last exerted.

When Nelson departed, in 1803, to take the command in the Mediterranean, the minister's last words to him were these: "Take every possible care of their Sicilian majesties, for the king considers them as the most faithful allies he has ever had." In this opinion the British cabinet long persisted, and it led to a measure which, if it indeed took place, as there is reason to believe, has not unfitly been called the most absurd act that was ever committed by a civilized nation. It was at that time more convenient for Buonaparte to extort money from the court of Naples, than to send an

army to take possession of the kingdom; Naples, therefore, became a tributary state, and Great Britain agreed to pay it a subsidy to enable it to discharge its tribute. It is asserted by one whose means of infor mation are not to be doubted, that by order of the Neapolitan government the money was paid direct by the Bri tish agent into the hands of the French banker at Naples, so that we actual ly subsidised France to carry on the war against ourselves!

Nelson had the strongest prejudices in favour of the king and queen of Naples; they loved and honoured him as their deliverer, and he who had shared in their danger, and entered but too deeply into their resentments, looked upon their re-establishment as his own work, and from feelings of personal as well as political pride, would of all men be most unwilling to see any thing in their conduct but what was good. Nelson, however, saw and felt the abominations of their misrule. "The state of Sicily," says he, "is almost as bad as a civilized country can be, I have no doubt from what is passing at Naples, and in that island, that the French will have it. I see clearly if we have not a little army to take it, the French will. The mass of Sici

lians wish for a change of government; they desire us, but if we will not go there, they would gladly, I fear, receive the French: the middle and lower classes would be relieved from the oppressions of the nobles; they love their king and the English, but hate the nobles and the French."

One good thing had been done in Sicily under the last reign. When the Marquis of Caraccioli was viceroy, the inquisition was abolished, and all its papers committed to the flames. The people, superstitious as they were, rejoiced in the downfal of this accursed tribunal; they broke in pieces the statue of the devilish St Domingo at the entrance of the holy office, and were with difficulty prevented from demolishing the building itself. This good had been done. But those reforms, which from the temper of the age might have been expected to follow, were checked by the fatal course of events in France; sudden and total revolution instead of gradual amendment became the object of virtuous, but erring minds; and on the other hand, the government in its fear upheld every species of abuse, as if their existence was identified with its own. Every where throughout the two Sicilies, the people laboured under the most vexatious and oppressive grievances. Calabria, with all its natural advantages, was thinned by progressive depopulation, because in a country where marriages are remarkably fruitful, the people were deterred from marriage by the dread of increasing wretchedness. The peasant, in addition to his rent, paid to the baron a tax in kind for his produce, and a toll at his mill and at his oil-press; he paid also to the king a second and a heavy tax for his oil and his raw silk and before they could be exported they were taxed again in the merchants'

hands.-The people were forbidden to use salt from the natural salt-pans near Taranto, in order that the royal saltworks at Barletta might not be deprived of the benefit of their consumption; the peasants, however, went armed, and supplied themselves with what nature had provided for their wants, in defiance of this monstrous prohibition. The king, like the other branches of his effete race, had neither character for good nor evil, and cared only for his amusements. A passionate love for field-sports prevails in that family like an hereditary folly. He had a cover for pheasants in the isle of Procida, and to preserve these birds, a law was made, forbidding the inhabitants to keep cats. They petitioned for its repeal, but their petition, if it ever reached the king, was disregarded, and rats and mice in consequence became so numerous, (for dogs also for the same reason were banished from the island,) that the very children were not safe in the cradle.

Bad as things were in Naples, they were worse in Sicily. In the former country there were some limits to the power of the baronage; but here the lord of the manor appointed to every place of trust and jurisdiction; he had his judge upon the fief, and his law agent in Palermo, whose confirmation of the sentence was all that was required for it to be executed without farther appeal. When these enormous powers were given by the Norman conqueror to his captains,* he gave them nothing but the property and the bodies of infidels, which he abandoned to their will and discretion as objects of contempt and hatred; but when Christians became in process of time sole occupiers of the lands held on these conditions of abject vassalage, the barons did not suffer any diminution of their authority to take place on

that account. The great engine of oppression in Sicily was the tribunal of patrimony, a board consisting of six members, which superintends the king's territorial revenues and the municipalities of the royal and baronial towns; the property of every individual is implicated in these, and thus, under the pretence of an authority in what regards the royal interests, it became a civil court, and assumed a dictatorial right over all matters of export or import, not by fixed rules or general laws, but by issuing an order or permission on every individual occasion. None of the produce of the country can be exported without the permission of this tribunal, though the exporter offers to pay the duties; and this is of course a business of favour or corruption. The permission to export hemp is farmed annually as an exclusive privilege to one person in a maritime district, and the merchant who would export it, must pay a duty to this individual as well as to the state. Corn, cattle, and oil, cannot be exported without a particular order from Palermo, and this order can only be obtained by persevering bribery. But in nothing is the interference of this most mischievous tribunal so pernicious as in the corn trade. It issues orders to every corporation to provide as much wheat as will suffice for the whole year, to effect which, they are invested with authority to prevent the produce of their district from being carried to a neighbouring town, and to forbid that of another from being admitted into theirs. A total stagnation of the inland trade is the immediate consequence. If the price of corn should fall after the corporation has made its provision, no man under the severest penalties must bring it to market: he must let it spoil in his granaries, or submit to sell it and give up

his profits to the corporation: if he grinds it, the flour is seized; if he attempt to export it, he runs the risk of being ruined.-Another abomination is practised in laying in this yearly store; in most townships the price is fixed at harvest by an assize, and at this price the farmer is obliged to deliver in to the corporation the third part of his produce on demand, notwithstanding the prices may in the meantime have advanced. Sometimes the corporation informed a landholder that they are supplied, and therefore that he may sell off; and after a few months called upon him for his quota, and obliged him to buy the quantity required at whatever advance. For these things there was no remedy, for justice was unknown in Sicily. Smug. gling is the only thing which has pre served the country from utter devasta. tion and ruin.

The parliament consists of three houses; the barons, the ecclesiastical assembly, and the demesnal house. In the first, every baron has as many votes as he has villages or towns on his estates. The last is very far from being a popular assembly. The towns of the royal demesne are the only places which are represented; the inhabitants have no choice in appointing their deputy, and the corporation ge nerally nominate their attorney at Palermo, by which means one man often represents several places. These lawyers are dependent on the nobles; the house is never convened; and its vote is obtained as a matter of form. In these three houses the power of grant. ing supplies is vested, but the majo rity of two is sufficient; and the lords. and ecclesiastics throw the whole bur. then upon the commons. No land-tax whatever is imposed on the great landholders, who, in fact, possess the greater part of the whole island. Every thing