the secret instructions under which they had acted. The French towns and villages on the frontier were filled with fugitives, principally priests, monks, and officers, loudly professing the honesty of their intentions, and demanding rewards, rather than deprecating punishment. The disturbances which had been excited in the province of Guipuscoa were put down by the governor without any additional military force, and their leader, and several of his officers, were made prisoners. While the army was thus clearing the open country of the rebels, and recovering the towns, the king remained at Tarragona, where he had ordered the clergy of the province to assemble. There was little room to doubt of the share which they had borne in the insurrection. It was certain that they had not exerted their influence to prevent or to suppress it; and it was certain that their influence, if it had been so employed, would have been as effectual as the presence of an army. The bishop of Lerida was the only ecclesiastical dignitary of Catalonia who had displayed any cordiality towards the royal cause: his brethren had either manifested a most suspicious luke-warmness, or given positive encouragement to the rebels. The inferior clergy, and the confraternities of monks, interfered more openly, bold in the armed support of the royalist volunteers, and in the influence of their great leaders and protectors, the Camarilla of Madrid. On the day on which the king left the Escurial for Catalonia, M. Cavajal, the inspector general of the royalist volunteers, addressed a proclamation to those of Madrid, in which, alluding to the defection of the regiments at Vich and Manresa, he expressed a hope, "that they would be more loyal than some of their comrades in arms who had failed in their "duty to religion and to their oaths."Scarcely had the document containing these expressions been issued, when a secret, but supreme, command caused its disappearance. When the king's proclamation from Tarragona, on the 28th September, reached the insurgent bodies in the neighbourhood, the monks went among them encouraging them to disregard it, and to meet the royal troops in the field. A peculiarly active monk, father Punal, despatched expresses in various directions to columns of the rebels whom he believed inclined to submit, assuring them that it was not truly the king who had arrived at Tarragona. The royal court of Barcelona made a representation to the king, in which it plainly stated, and adduced evidence of the statement, that it was the secular and regular clergy of Catalonia who were the real promoters of the disturbances which desolated the province. The proceedings, indeed, of the ecclesiastics had been so open, as scarcely to leave it possible for the king to overlook their offences, while he was sending in crowds to the gallies the officers who had only been their instruments in the field. Father Punal was seized, and condemned to death. Several of the clergy were arrested, of those especially who had been members of, or had filled offices under, the provisional juntas. These unexpected measures made such an impression, that the vicar-general of Barcelona solicited the municipal body of that city to present most humble supplications to the king, not denying the part which the clergy had acted, but assuring his majesty that whatever had happened in Catalonia had been done only with the intention of manifesting the great love of his subjects towards his person, their anxious desire to see him ruling in the plenitude of absolute sovereignty, and their earnest wish to see his administration purified from the presence of all persons of doubtful fidelity to his unlimited plea sure. The demand for this "purification" was one of the most clamourous pretexts of the insurgents. The clergy were naturally desirous that all offices should be filled with their creatures; and their creatures were equally desirous to be put into offices. On the overthrow of the Cortes in 1823, a series of tribunals of purification had been instituted, from one to another of which there was a privilege of appeal, for the purpose of marking out all persons who ought not to be received into the royal service. The insurgents complained that these tribunals, and especially those of appeal, had not done their duty; that accordingly many suspected persons had been gratified with places to the exclusion of better royalists than themselves; and they demanded that a re-purification should take place. The king, although he had already declared that their demands were incompatible with the dignity and security of the throne, went a certain length to gratify them. By an ordinance of October 14th, issued at Tarragona, reciting in the preamble, "that the juntas of purification, civil and military, had displayed an excess of benig nity towards many persons impli-, cated in the transactions of 1820," the king, "listening to the complaints of those who are dissatisfied" (such was the mild designation applied to armed rebels) decreed, that all persons, who had been rejected by the tribunal of the purification of the first instance, but, on an appeal, had been purified and admitted by the second tribunal, and who, in consequence of that sentence, had been called to fill a civil or military office, should be immediately dismissed. If they had not yet been so fortunate as to obtain situations they were only declared incapable of being proposed for any office in all time coming. This was a concession to the rebels; but, on the other hand, they themselves were visited with a severity, which, though not undeserved, was in no small degree unexpected. Ferdinand removed from Tarragona to Valencia, there to await the queen, who was coming from Madrid to join him; and thence he issued orders for shooting and hanging, without much discrimination, the insurgents who had fallen into his power. At Tarragona the scaffold was in daily request; the shooting of the inferior rebels went on so secretly, that it was frequently announced only by the unceasing reports of the muskets: their officers were taken to the gibbet. Many of them merited the punishment which they received; but many, likewise, of Ferdinand's victims had submitted on the faith of the amnesty. The consequence of their execution was, to excite distrust and desperation. Others, who were as deeply involved, would prefer dying with arms in their hands to being hung on a gallows. During the progress of the insurrection, Barcelona itself had remained tranquil. Its inhabitants, dependent on commerce, and suffering, therefore, under the miserable state of depression to which the trade of Spain, under the absolute sway of Ferdinand and his servants, had already been reduced, probably felt little inclination to further the views of a party, whose success would have rendered their condition still more hopeless. At all events, the presence of a large French garrison, which behaved with great impartiality, except when the insurgents approached too near for the safety of the city, prevented any factious movement. The king, however, wished to shew his people that he could restore tranquillity to Catalonia with his own unaided arm, and that foreign mercenaries were not necessary to support his rights; or, as some imagined, his Apostolic counsellors were not unwilling to get rid of a force, which was a troublesome impediment to the progress of their friends. Soon after the king's arrival at Tarragona, a convention was signed with the French ambassador for the removal of the garrison of Barcelona; and, in the end of November, the troops which had composed it, to the number of seven regiments, quitted Catalonia, and took their way towards France. Although every rational man had long regarded the separation of the South American provinces from Spain as being final and complete, the Spanish government had not only continued to assert its empty supremacy, but had even prohibited all commercial intercourse with the revolted colonies, lest it should appear to waive a claim which there was no prospect of its ever being able to enforce. By recognizing their independence it could easily have secured to itself commercial advantages which would have been a valuable and solid counterpoise to the loss of titular sovereignty: by refusing this acknowledgment, and prohibiting all direct trade with them not only in Spanish, but even in foreign vessels, without a special licence, it ruined the commerce and marine of Spain, while it inflicted no substantial injury on the colonies; it aggravated the provocations to opposition, and weakened its own means of aggression. It now began to show some faint glimmering of returning reasonsome desire to regain for itself a portion of that trade which it had formerly interdicted to the world. To bring a few thousand reals into the treasury, and yet avoid the appearance of recognizing rights which, for a long time, it had been unable to deny, except in words, it borrowed the protection of a foreign flag, and consented to steal, as it were, some indirect commercial intercourse with its former vassals, by the intervention of fo reigners, whose claim to trade with them at all it formally disavowed. On the 13th of February an ordinance was issued, opening a direct trade between Spain and America in foreign vessels. It authorised Spanish merchants to ship goods directly for South America under a foreign flag, and to receive South American commodities in Spain upon paying certain duties, without the necessity of a permit in each par. ticular instance, as had been the case till then. The export duty was fixed at four per cent above the duties formerly established for goods exported to the colonies; and the import duty on the products of America, brought to Spain in foreign vessels, at eight per cent above the former rate for national ships. The export duty was raised to 10 per cent, when the cargo, assorted from a Spanish port and destined for America, should consist of a half or a third part of foreign produce or manufactures. Although Ferdinand would not acknowledge South American independence, the Pope, as being responsible, in some measure, for the salvation of all Christendom, did not see in that refusal any good reason why the souls of the South American independents should be consigned to everlasting damnation, or, which was the very next thing to such damnation, should be left to receive the rites of religion at the hands of persons not canonically instituted. Negotiations had accordingly been going on for a considerable time between his holiness and some of the republics; and, in the month of June in this year, on the recommendation of Bolivar, as head of the Colombian Commonwealth, he gave canonical institution to several South American bishops. His Catholic Majesty took high offence at this act of the court of Rome; he considered it an infraction of his rights of sovereignty, and a breach of the concordat between himself and the Pope. Orders were immediately transmitted to the frontiers not to admit the new papal nuncio, who was on his way to Madrid; and the nuncio, receiving on the frontiers official communications to the same effect, returned into France. CHAP. X. PORTUGAL.-New irruption of the Rebels into the Province of MinhoThey are defeated at Barca, and driven beyond the Frontier-They again enter the Province of Tras Os Montes: they are again driven into Spain, and are there disarmed-Position of the British ArmyOpening of the Cortes-Differences between the Chambers regarding a Loan-d Loan voted-Finances-Discussions on the Conduct to be pursued towards the Rebels-Motion for the Dismissal of the Ministry-Prorogation of the Cortes-Proclamation against the Clergy-An Amnesty is published-Decrees of the Emperor received from Brazil-They are not put into Execution-Mutiny in the Garrison of Elvas-Dissensions in the Cabinet-Illness of the Regent-Change of Ministry-Don Miguel announces his intention of returning to assume the Regency-Desertions from the Army-Saldanha dismissed from the Ministry of War-Disturbances in Lisbon and at Oporto-Proceedings against their Instigators and against the Press-Changes of Ministry-The Emperor appoints Don Miguel Regent--Don Miguel visits England on his return to Portugal-The Bank of Lisbon stops Payment. HE expectations were disappointed, which had been entertained, that the discomfiture of the Portuguese rebels in the engagement at Coruches, in the province of Beira, on the 9th January in this year, would put an end to their aggressions against the tranquillity of their country. On the 18th December, the Spanish government had given the most solemn assurances, that the orders for disarming the fugitive insurgents, and removing them from the frontier, would be promptly and rigorously executed; and, on the 11th of January, just two days after their defeat, a circular, in the same strain, had been addressed by the minister at war to the captains-general of the frontier provinces. So far were these assurances from being carried into execution with good faith, that the rebels were allowed again to assemble, and organize a new invasion, on the frontiers of Gallicia and Valladolid; and in the end of January, to the number of eight or ten thousand men, with Spanish Guerillas, Spanish officers, and Spanish artillery, Chaves, Montealegre, and Magessi, again entered the province of Minho. Their intention was, to march upon Oporto, the capital of the province of Minho; but, aware of the difficulty of forcing the passages of the Tamega, which covers that province through the greater part of its length on the eastward, they entered it by its northern extremity, in the hope that they might be able to reach the Douro, before the generals of the regency could return from Beira to oppose them. The scanty portion of constitutional troops in the North, were |