view, it was wholly ineffective. The vengeance of the faction had not been sufficiently glutted with blood; and, because Ferdinand had been pleased to set limits to their vengeance, they, very fancifully, adopted the belief that he was becoming a Liberal.

A considerable number of changes were afterwards made in various of fices of the state, by which certain Ultras were displaced by persons of the moderate party. Among the former were General Aymerich, who had held together the three important posts of minister of war, inspectorgeneral of the infantry, and commander of the royalist volunteers of Madrid; and General Carvajal, captain-general of the province of Madrid. These changes threw the royalist volunteers into the greatest fermentation; and, affecting to believe that there was a plot laid by the Liberals to poison the whole of them, because some drummers of their corps had taken sick after eating of lambs' head, they appeared on the streets with arms in their hands, shouting -"Live the absolute King! Death to the Negroes! Live Aymerich and Carvajal!" and committed some dread ful excesses. Troops of the line were introduced into the city from the neighbouring towns; but it was not until after several days, and some bloodshed, that they succeeded in re-storing tranquillity. A committee of physicians declared the lambs' head plot to be a mere fable; and a placard which had been affixed to the walls, bearing Live the Constitution! death to the King and religion!" was ascertained by the police to be the production of the Ultra-Royalist party.

Notwithstanding the rebellious spirit evinced by the Royalist Volunteers, the government had not the courage to suppress them; and, in the meantime, addresses poured in

from the provinces, demanding the recall of General Aymerich, and the dismissal of Recacho, the minister of police. At Segovia, Cordova, and Seville, there had been popular commotions; and, to make "confusion worse confounded," there was discovered the existence of a white lodge, organized upon the Carbonari plan, having for its object the establishment of absolutism in its utmost perfection. The prelates were enjoined by government to inculcate the daty of obedience in their flocks; but many of them refused to obey the mandate. The Bishop of Orihuela re-established the Inquisition within his diocese, by which he only imitated the example which had been set by the Bishop of Tarragona; and when the proceeding was denounced to the Council of Castile, that body had the daring cowardice (if such a compound expression may be allowed), not merely to extenuate, but to justify it. The various measures of the government at this juncture were so extremely inconsistent and contradictory, as to make it evident that there were two hostile parties in the cabinet, who alternately swayed the mind, such as it was, of the mo narch.

At length, a discovery was made of a correspondence, by which it appeared that a formidable plot had been formed by the apostolical party, for dethroning Ferdinand, and substituting for him his brother Don Carlos ; by which substitution, the party expected to gain the evacuation of Spain by the French troops, the re-establishment of the Inquisition, the confiscation, in favour of the royalists, of the estates of all who had participated in the revolution, and similar important advantages. In this conspiracy, a number of noblemen and prelates, members of the council of Castile, and persons attached to the court, were seriously implicated. It was

discovered, moreover, on 17th August, that upwards of 200,000 reals had been distributed to corrupt the royal guards; and that, on the night preceding, General Bessieres, who was to head the insurrection, had been secretly in Madrid, where he had seduced three companies of the regiment of Saint Jacques, and taken them away with him; and that he had taken the direction of Alcalha, having, on his route, invited the regular military and volunteers to join him, and assist in rescuing the King from captivity.

An order was instantly issued by the King, placing all the insurgents who should fail to surrender on the first summons, and be taken with arms in their hands, under martial law, but allowing them time to die like Christians; and promising pardon to such privates and subalterns as should deliver up their officers. The new minister of war, the Count d'Espagne, was, at the same time, directed to pursue Bessieres, with the whole disposable forces.

Bessieres, with the three companies which he had seduced, and some cuirassiers, arrived at Torrija, where he denounced death against all the ministers excepting Calomarde, and issued orders in name of the King, as if he had really been in captivity; but the minds of several of his military followers having by this time been disabused, they deserted him, and returned to Madrid. Bessieres then directed his route through a number of towns, in all of which he raised contributions, and arrived, on the 23d, in the village of Zaffrila, in the neighbourhood of Molina d'Arragon, where he, with eight officers, who were all that remained with him, halted, in order to bait their horses. At this place, they were overtaken by an officer named Albuin, who had distinguished himself

in the war of independence, and, at his own request, had been intrusted by the Count d'Espagne with the pursuit of Bessieres, and had under him a detachment of the grenadier dragoons of the guard-royal. Bessieres, and the whole of his party excepting one, were taken, and convey. ed to Molina d'Arragon, where they were confined three days, according to Spanish custom, and then shot, after acknowledging their guilt and receiving the consolations of religion.

go.

Consequent upon the suppression of Bessieres's rebellion, a number of the apostolical party were put under arrest, or banished from the capital; but no sensible change took place, notwithstanding, in the system of vernment. At the very time that a price was put upon the head of the above apostolical tool, two constitutionalists, Paul Iglesias and (to the eternal disgrace of the Spanish name, be it said) the famous Empecinado, Don Juan Martin, both of whom had been apprehended at Tariffa, were publicly executed at Madrid. They met their death like heroes.

To remedy the financial distresses of the country, a consultative junta was appointed, with directions to submit the results of their labours to the Council of Castile. About the same time, the moderate party was thunderstruck by a royal ordinance, dated 24th October, which removed their chief, Bermudez Zea, from his of fice of Prime Minister, and substituted the Duke del Infantado in the place of him. It is no small proof of Ferdinand's habitual deception, that the very evening previous to Bermudez's dismissal, which was quite unexpect ed, he had received him most graciously, and conversed with him long in the most affable manner.

Somehow, it has been supposed, that the Danish Ambassador, a personal enemy of Bermudez, was chiefly

instrumental in bringing about his disgrace, though the influence of an ambassador of his rank, we should suppose, must be extremely feeble. However, the ex-minister received from foreign courts, especially that of Russia, assurances of the high consideration in which he was held by them; and even his successor, in name of the King, complimented him upon his great experience, sagacity, and patriotism. A number of other changes in the cabinet ensued upon the dismissal of Bermudez, and such as insured to the lately rebellious apostolical party a complete ascendency.

In Portugal, there was more of superficial tranquillity than in the neighbouring kingdom; but there existed within it precisely the same elements of discord as in the other. The French ambassador, M. Hyde de Neuville had the influence and address to prevail with the King to retain the Count Subserra (who was attached to the French as opposed to the English interest) at the head of the ministry, notwithstanding that the politics of other ministers, the Marquis de Palmella, the Count de Povoa, and C. Oliviera Leite de Barras, were directly the reverse of those of that nobleman. The arrival of Sir William A'Court at Lisbon, as English ambassador, heightened the discord which reigned in the cabinet; and the French ambassador having been recalled, the King at length determined to get rid wholly of a ministry, the composition of which was to him a source of incessant disquietude. By a decree of 15th January, he, very incongruously, appointed the Marquis de Palmella, who was in the English interest, ambas sador to the French court, and Count de Subserra, who was in the opposite interest, to the court of St James;

and, by another decree of the same date, appointed the following indivi duals:Cornea de Lacerda to be minister of the interior, Souza Barradas to be minister of justice, Count de Barbacena to be minister of war and marine, De Melho to be minister of finance, and Pinheiro Ferreira to be minister of foreign affairs, but only ad interim. By this sweeping change, it was believed that the English interest in the cabinet was materially diminished. By a subsequent royal decree, dated 5th February, the respective appointments of Subserra and Palmella to the courts of England and France, were reversed.

The new ministry devoted itself with great assiduity to the reduction of the national debt, which had been much augmented by three loans made by authority of the Cortes; and pursued the example of the British ministry, by lowering duties, in order to give an impulse and encouragement to national industry.

In the meantime, the conspiracy for dethroning the King, and placing the Queen and the Infant Don Miguel at the head of the government, which had been baffled last year, still existed, and pursued its machinations with unceasing activity. Every manoeuvre was attempted to bring liberal principles under popular hatred; and the conspirators went even the length of procuring the clandestine profanation of some sacred vessels at Lisbon and Oporto, which they atrociously ascribed to the sect of Freemasons, in the expectation that the odium attached to it would excite the populace to a general massacre of them. The government, instead of opposing the machinations of this inexorable conspiracy with measures of severity, determined, most infatuatedly, to make a display of its clemency, which could have no other effect than to dishearten its own friends, and encou

rage its enemies. On 24th June, appeared a royal amnesty, regarding the whole rebellious events of the last year, from which amnesty only were excluded the Marquis d'Abrantes, and a few obscure individuals, who were exiled from the kingdom. Others were ordered to reside at a distance from the capital. In this document, the King, alluding to melancholy events, "which had pierced his heart-the heart of a husband and a father," and for which the rules of justice required a rigorous punishment, observed, that "the love of the father had prevailed in his breast over the inflexibility of the king, and determined him, in the conflict of his feelings, to embrace the councils of a magnanimous clemency." In fine, he directed that the whole official proceedings connected with the events in question should be burned,

in order that no trace whatever of them might remain to cause uneasiness to any one.

After the appearance of this docu ment, the conspirators renewed their infamous attempts with redoubled activity; and the walls of the principal towns were covered with their in. flammatory proclamations; but fortunately, all their schemes failed in provoking a rebellion, or even any very serious disturbance.

On 15th November, there was pub. lished, at Lisbon, the treaty conclu ded at Rio de Janeiro, on 29th August, between Portugal and Brazil, by which the absolute independence of the latter was formally acknowledged by the former country. The particulars of this treaty will be de tailed when we come to treat of Bra. zil.

AUSTRIA had so completely subjugated the Germanic powers to its iron system of internal policy, that it ceased for a time from its cares with regard to the revolutionary spirit in the North, with which its imagination had been so long haunted, and congratulated itself upon what it considered the consummation of its labours in that quarter.

In April, politicians were called upon to exercise their talents for speculation by a journey which the Emperor undertook to his Italian dominions. By some it was conjectured there was to be a new Congress of the Holy Alliance at Milan, with a view to discuss the questions arising out of the political situation of Spanish America, and also that of Greece; and the continued residence of Prince Metternich at Paris was imagined to be for the purpose of smoothing down any difficulties which the policy of the French Cabinet might oppose to the propositions to be submitted to the Congress by Austria. By others it was alleged, that it was designed to constitute a federation

of the Italian powers, of which Aus tria was to be declared the Protector. Neither of these conjectures proved to be correct.

In the beginning of May, the Emperor and Empress, accompanied by their household and the whole corps diplomatique, made their entry into Milan, amid the acclamations of the populace. In the course of a few days, there were speedily assembled in that capital, upon the august invitation of the Emperor, the following Italian Sovereigns,-The Archduchess Maria Louisa, Princess of Parma; the Prince and Princess of Lucca and Piombino; the Duke and Duchess of Modena; the GrandDuke of Tuscany; and, last of all, the King (Francis I. who, the previ ous December, had succeeded to the throne on the death of his father) and Queen of Naples. There were two Italian Princes, however, who decli❤ ned being present. These were, His Holiness the Pope, and the King of Sardinia,-a circumstance which gives some countenance to one of the rumours which were circulated re