to throw off his yoke, and put an end to the system of indiscriminate imprisonment and confiscation in which his satellites were revelling. The inhabitants assumed a menacing attitude; many of the officers of the garrison were prepared to take part in the revolt. It was expected to break out on the 19th of December; and, in the course of that night, various bodies of citizens and military assembled at different points. But no plan had been concerted; no communication even seemed to have taken place between them. Having remained on foot all night, each expecting that the others would join them, they separated next morning; having effected nothing except the putting of Don Miguel upon his guard. That they were allowed to disperse in peace was owing to the weakness of the government, which would not venture on further provocation, until it had armed itself with greater power to punish. A large additional military force was brought towards Lisbon, drawn chiefly from the bands which had been organized by the marquis de Chaves for establishing despotism, and composed therefore of men on whom the despot could safely rely. This very measure hastened a new attempt at insurrection, which took place on the 9th of January. It was headed by a brigadier-general Moreira; but, like its predecessor, it was premature and illarranged. Several officers, and some of the troops of the garrison, had been brought into the enterprise; their object was to proclaim Donna Maria queen. None of the inhabitants seemed to have been made privy to it, nor any means to have been prepared for its success, beyond the small number of

individuals directly concerned. Moreira had either miscalculated the disposition of the military to whom he trusted, or the plot had been betrayed; for, on the night of the 9th of January, when in the act of calling out the regiment at the head of which he intended to make the attempt, he was arrested, along with the other officers who had joined him, and the contemplated revolt was immediately stifled.

The government, now feeling itself stronger, made use of this occurrence to multiply arrests all over Lisbon. Every individual, whom any creature of the government chose to dislike, or any private enemy thought fit to denounce byan anonymous accusation, was immediately consigned to the dungeons of the Limoeiro, or of St. Julian. A special commission was named to try the actual conspirators. After having been detained for several weeks in solitary confinement, they were brought before it in the end of February. Some of the prisoners were under age, and a counsel was assigned to them. But they were allowed only four and twenty hours to prepare their defence; although the law provided, that no prisoner should answer to a capital charge in less than five days. Moreira, and four of his companions, were condemned to be transported to Africa for life; two more were to suffer the same punishment for ten years. The rest were acquitted, as persons against whom nothing was proved. Miguel was shocked at the lenity of the sentence; it was not sufficiently high seasoned with vengeance to gratify his pa late. He refused to ratify it, and ordered a new sentence to be framed, by which the five pri

soners, condemned to transportation for life, were directed to be hanged; the two, who were to have been transported for ten years, were transported for life; and all those, who had been acquitted, were transported for ten years. Some of the judges ventured to oppose this atrocious proceeding; but the language of justice or humanity, of law or reason, was to Miguel an unknown tongue, and the sentence was carried into execution. Even the usual space of three days, allowed by the law of Portugal, to intervene between the passing of a capital sentence, and its being carried into effect, was shortened to one. Don Miguel's sentence was signed on the 5th of March, and next day Moreira and his four companions were executed.

In comparison with death, the condition of the numberless prisoners in the gaols and fortresses was scarcely to be envied. Uncondemned, though all of them, and innocent, though most of them, were, they were delivered over to the merciless authority of apostolic miscreants, who seemed to find no gratification but in the invention of new modes of inflicting misèry. Among the incarcerated were many persons in affluent circumstances, who charitably contributed towards the support of the poorer prisoners, whom their masters were willing to leave in starvation. To deprive the latter of this alleviation of their miseries, the government ordered the former to be removed from the dungeons of the city, and immured in the fortresses of St. Julian, Belem, and Bugio. Without being brought to trial, the prisoners were cut off from all communication, by speech, or writing, even with the members of their own

families. Many of them died in consequence of want and confinement; nor were suspicions wanting that poison had seconded the jealousy of the usurper. No rank, character, or age was respected. A child, five years old, was kept in solitary confinement five days, and subjected to all the tortures of the prison, to extort evidence against its father and mother. A refugee Spanish bishop, who had been a member of the Cortes of 1812, and had since lived in peace and obscurity at Lisbon, was thrust into the dungeons of St. Julian, and died in four days, in consequence of the brutal maltreatment heaped upon him by Telles Jordao, a noted leader throughout the apostolic rebellion, to whom the government of that fortress had been intrusted. Even the decencies of Christian burial were refused to him, for that was an honour of which "free-masons were considered unworthy, and the body was thrown into a hole in the esplanade of the castle. All the victuals carried in to the prisoners were carefully examined, lest they should be made the means of conveying communications, or implements of escape. The governor's son performed, one day, this dignified function, and amused himself by mingling filth with the prisoners' food. They refused to partake of it. Jordao thereupon gave orders, that they should be questioned who was the ringleader of the resolution, and that all, who would not declare his name, should be loaded with irons, and sent to the subterraneous dungeons. They were called out one after the other, but none of them would denounce his comrade. As they were taken out of the prison to go to the inquiry, one of the officers of the garrison

abused them atrociously as they passed, and when it was the turn of lieutenant-colonel Joao Chrisostome, formerly of the 5th of Caçadores, the abusive officer called him robber. The indignant colonel knocked him down. The general instantly appeared, and desired one of the soldiers to shoot the lieutenant-colonel. This injunction was repeatedly disobeyed by all the soldiers, till Jordao himself, seizing the bayonet of one of their muskets, stabbed him several times, and left him dead at his feet. Nor did the apostolics forget avarice, in their love of vengeance; their power was used for purposes of open spoliation, and shameless extortion. While the persons of the citizens were imprisoned with indiscriminate fury, and abused with reckless barbarity, their goods and possessions were sequestrated. The officers, the magistrates, and subordinate instruments employed in these transactions, were allowed to pay themselves, at their own discretion, out of the sequestrated estates. They took possession, and plundered without restraint. If property was brought to sale, they, or their agents, bought it at an under price; that price was seldom looked after, for every scoundrel was very tolerant of every other. Individuals were ruined, and the government gained little. Colonel Raymundo, the governor of Cascaes, by way of making money, ordered, of his own authority, that all shops should be closed at sunset, unless a special license were obtained from him to keep them longer open; and that license he never refused, when it was properly paid for. The kingdom was laid at the mercy of a set of men, to whose vengeance, avarice, and brutality, no bounds were even pretended to VOL. LXXI.

be set. Their uncontrolled passions could scarcely go beyond the example set them by their master, whose conduct, within the walls of his own palace, was frantic. From the moment of his return, Miguel had hated his sister Donna Maria, because she had been her brother's regent, and had been faithful to his brother's constitution. Miguel learned, that a footman, formerly in the private service of Donna Maria, had set out for England. He believed that this servant was the bearer of a correspondence between the princess and the agents of Don Pedro, and that she had taken this opportunity of saving from her brother her jewels and money. Don Miguel had been laying violent hands on all the money and other valuables which he could collect, to supply his coffers, in case he should be obliged to abandon the kingdom. Furious at the news of his sister's conduct, he rushed into her chamber with a pistol in his hand, and demanded an account of the flight of her servant. The princess stood trembling in silence; Miguel was about to strike her with a pistol, which was armed with a bayonet; danger gave her courage; she threw herself upon him, and overturned him. He sprung up, and again attacked her. Count Camarido, her chamberlain, threw himself before the ruffian; Miguel disabled him by stabbing him in the arm, and fired at the princess. The ball missed her, but killed a servant who was by her side. Other domestics interfered, and her life was saved. How many crimes did Miguel hold necessary to entitle him to the honour of being the most detestable of despots and usurpers? He had conspired against his father; he had usurped the

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throne of his brother; he had laughed at promises made, and oaths sworn in the face of Europe. As if all that might still expose him to the degrading suspicion of being capable of a virtuous or kindly sentiment, he had now attempted to assassinate his sister.

If a system directed to gratify the passions of such a man were susceptible of any aggravation, it was found in the interference of the queen mother. Atrocious as were the proceedings of the government, that worst of women and of wives was still unsatisfied, unless she could place them under the direction of her own creatures, for whose abhorrence of every thing like mercy and justice she might have the security of her own personal knowledge. The confinement of Miguel, in consequence of an accident which had happened to him in the end of the preceding year, gave her room for intriguing.* She succeeded in displacing the

ness,

In the beginning of the year the following treasonable proclamation was openly circulated by the queen's adherents:-"Royalists! To preserve the throne and the altar is and always has been the object of our endeavours, and the thought nearest and dearest to our hearts. But the throne and the altar are now tottering on the brink of ruin. The king, from his severe illand the constant restraint under which he has been kept, has been compelled, by his fears, to temporize with that impious masonic faction, which, for a length of time, has surrounded and still surrounds his royal person. With pain and indignation we see the faithful vassals of the king, who sacrificed their lives, their honours, and their properties, who left their country, and have suffered a painful emigration, still suffered to exist, and pine in want, in misery, and in oblivion, whilst the infernal free-masons still hold the most honourable and lucrative places. The prisons are converted into so many masonic lodges, where, without danger,

foreign minister, Rio Pardo, and procuring the appointment of count St. Lourenco, a minion of her own. To infuse her spirit into the police was a still more desirable object. The department of Justice (for so it was still named) under Furtado Rio, and the ministry of the Interior, under the count de Bastos, were already as bad as even she could have wished. Barata was at the head of the police, under which Portugal was enjoying the present reign of lawless bloodshed and plunder; but the queen carried the appointment of the dezembargador Belfort, who had shewn himself, in the proceedings of the preparatory judicial commission at Oporto, of which he was a member, an officer after her own heart. She went further, and placed the

they conspire against the throne and the altar, and against us individually.

"Now, royalists! let us not sheathe our swords till our country is saved from the worst of enemies! Let us, for the present, withdraw the reins of government from the hands of our hero, the king, Don Miguel, which, though at other times powerful, are now become feeble from his infirmities, and from the machinations of the vile set now surrounding him and let us call her majesty, the beloved queen-mother, to govern in his royal name; for which act we have laws and precedents. We can re-assume the royal power, and confer it upon whom we please, and whom we consider best qualified to govern and preserve the kingdom, as our ancestors declared on the assemblage of the Cortes in 1641. And on what better occasion than the present can we exercise this most sacred right? Let, then, the queen Donna Carlotta de Bourbon govern! and death at one blow to the republican monster of free-masonry; the gallows and the triangles must work conjointly, and with energy; and fires must be kindled in every quarter of Portugal to reduce to ashes the bodies and properties of these vile monsters!-then, and then only, may we raise our voices safely and triumphantly—”