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VII.

1815.

the attempts of Mina and Porlier; the latter had been pub- CHAP. licly thanked by the king for their conduct on the occasion. It was hoped, therefore, that no measures of severity would follow the suppression of these insurrections; and the dismissal, soon after the death of Porlier, of several of the ministers most inclined to arbitrary measures, led to a general hope that a more moderate system was about to be adopted, and that possibly a Cortes convoked according to the ancient customs might be assembled. But these hopes were soon blasted; and before the end of the year the determination of the king to act upon the most arbitrary principles was evinced in the most unequivocal manner. The trial of the liberals who had been arrested in Madrid, among whom were included several of the ministers of state, and most distinguished members of the late Cortes, began in November; but after long proceedings, and a transference of the cases from one tribunal to another, which it was thought might be more subservient to the royal will, the judges of the last reported that the evidence against the accused was not such as to bring them within the laws against traitors or persons exciting tumults and disturbances, which alone authorised severe punishments. Upon receiving this report the king ordered the proceedings to be brought to him, and pronounced sentences of the severest kind, and entirely illegal, on thirty-two of the leading liberals in Spain, which he signed with his own hand. Among these was one of ten years' service, as a common soldier, in a regiment stationed at Ceuta, on the celebrated Señor Arguelles, whose eloquence had so often resounded through the halls of the Cortes; and one of eight years of service in chains, in a regiment stationed at Gomera, on Señor1 Ann. Reg. Garcia Herreros, formerly Minister of Grace and Jus- 119. tice !1

Notwithstanding these severities, the situation of the king was very hazardous at Madrid, and secret information soon after reached him, which convinced him

1815, 118,

VII.

1816. 41.

ministers,

and policy at Madrid.

Jan. 26, 1816.

CHAP. that a change in the system of government had become indispensable. The extreme penury of the treasury, from the loss of nearly all the resources derived from South Change of America, and the distracted state of society in Spain after the six years' dreadful war of which the Peninsula had been the theatre, rendered it impossible to maintain the national armaments on anything like an adequate scale; and if it had been practicable, it was doubtful whether the danger of convulsion would not be thereby increased, since the whole revolts came from the army, and had been organised by its leading officers. The precarious condition of the royal authority was the more strongly felt, that the clergy, though possessed of unbounded influence over their flocks, and invaluable allies in a protracted struggle, had no armed force at their command to meet the rebellious bands of the soldiery, whom the liberal leaders had shown they could so easily array against the Government. The weight of these considerations ere long appeared in a partial change of the ministry. To the surprise of all, there appeared in the Madrid Gazette of 28th January 1816, a decree appointing the celebrated and enlightened Don Pedro de Cevallos to his former office of First Secretary of State, and admitting that his dismissal, on the resumption by the king of the royal authority, had been founded on erroneous information.* By the same decree, the cognisance of state offences was taken from the extraordinary tribunals, by which they had hitherto been tried, and remitted to the ordinary tribunals. This was a great step towards a more just system of administration; and the changed policy of the Court was at the same time evinced by the conferring of honours and offices on the ministers who had

Jan. 26.

* "Considering as unfounded the motives which induced me to order your discharge from the office of my First Secretary of State and of the Cabinet, and being highly satisfied with the zeal, exactitude, and affection with which, in the cruelest times, you have served myself and the State, I reinstate you in the use and exercise of your office, of which you will immediately take charge."-Decree, 26th January 1816.-Madrid Gazette.

VII.

1816.

Moniteur,

Ormed the cabinet of Don Pedro de Cevallos, though they CHAP. were not reinstated in the ministry. These advances towards a liberal government, however, had no effect in checking the conspiracies, for one was soon after discovered at Madrid, chiefly among half-pay officers, who had flocked there in great numbers-which, however, was 129, 130. suppressed without any commotion.1

sures.

Feb. 3,

1816; Ann.

Reg. 1816,

42.

of the Je

other des

It soon appeared, also, that if the liberals were determined on continuing their conspiracies, the king was not Restoration less set on rushing headlong into the most arbitrary mea- suits, and A severe decree against all persons bearing arms potic meaafter nightfall was issued on 20th March, and another sures. on 4th December. The discovery of the conspiracy at Madrid was made the pretence for innumerable arrests in every town, and almost every village, in the kingdom, of persons who were found meeting after ten at night; and the utmost terror was struck into the persons apprehended, and their relations, by the information that, on the 19th July, the State prisoners at Ceuta, who embraced most July 19. of the members of the late Cortes, had been removed at dead of night, put in irons, and hurried on board a zebecque, which set sail with them on an unknown destination. In fact, they were conveyed to Port Mahon in Minorca, where it was thought they would be more secure. And about the same time a decree appeared which re- July 25. vealed, in a still more decisive manner, the determination of Government permanently to destroy freedom of thought. Not content with enthralling the present, they aimed at throwing their chains over the future; and a decree issued in July, re-establishing the order of the Decree, Jesuits, restoring to them their possessions in so far as July 24, they had not been alienated, and intrusting them with niteur, Aug. the entire direction of education, both male and female, Ann. Reg. 1816, 130, threatened to throw the same chains permanently over the iз1.' souls of the people.2

An event occurred in the autumn of this year, which was fondly looked forward to by the persecuted liberals

2

1816; Mo

1, 1816;

CHAP.

VII.

1816.

43. Double

families of

Spain and

Portugal. Sept. 28.

as a harbinger of rest, and that was a double union of the royal families of Spain and Portugal. Ferdinand, who, since the loss of his young and captivating consort in 1808, had been a widower, now resolved to afford a marriages of the royal chance for the continuance of the direct line of succession, by entering into a second marriage, and, by the advice of his Council, he determined on making proposals to his niece, the Infanta Maria Isabel Francisca, second daughter of the King of Portugal. At the same time, proposals were made for an alliance between DON CARLOS, the King's younger brother, and the heir-presumptive to the throne, for whom so adventurous a fate was reserved, and the Infanta Maria Francisca de Acis, third daughter of the same sovereign. Both proposals were accepted; and as the princesses were at Rio Janeiro, where the royal family of Portugal had been since their flight thither in 1808, when Portugal was first overrun by the French, the Duque del Infantado was sent with a splendid retinue to Cadiz, to receive the princesses on their landing from Brazil. The marriages were both celebrated with great pomp at Madrid on the 28th September; and on this occasion an amnesty, which professed to be general, was published. It contained, how

Sept. 28.

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ever, so many exceptions as practically left it in the
power of Government to continue, with scarce any limi-
tation, the oppression of the liberals, for it excluded all
persons charged with the following crimes—" Lese
majesty, divine and human treason, homicide of priests,
blasphemy, coining false money, exporting prohibited
articles, resisting the officers of justice, and mal-admin-
istration in the exercise of the royal powers." There
were few crimes connected with the State which might
not, with the aid of a little straining, be brought within
some one of these exceptions.1

An event connected with the Peninsula occurred in the
close of the preceding year, and was heard of in Europe
in this, strongly illustrative of the vast consequences

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VII.

44.

the king

Dec. 28,

hich were to follow to the most distant parts of the CHAP. earth from the events following on the French Revolution. On December 28, 1815, the Prince-Regent of 1817. Portugal, who had never, since the migration of the royal Creation of family, quitted the shores of Brazil, issued a decree, in domof which, after enumerating the vast extent and boundless Brazil, capabilities of his dominions in the New World, and the 1815. benefits which would result from the entire union of the dominions of the house of Portugal in both hemispheres, he declared that the colony of Brazil should thenceforward be elevated to the RANK OF A KINGDOM; and directed that, in future, Portugal, the two Algarves, and Brazil, shall form one united kingdom, under the title of the "United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the two Algarves." Thus was monarchy, for the first time, erected by the European race in the New World-an event of the more importance that the immense territories of the house of Braganza in the New World, embracing above four times the area of Old France, were placed alongside of the newly emancipated republics, broken off from the dominions of Spain in the same hemisphere; and thus an opportunity was afforded of demonstrating, by actual Decree, experiment, the comparative influence of the monarchical 1815; Moand republican forms of government on the welfare of the 16, 1816; species under the climate of South America, and with the 1816, 131. Iberian or Celtic family of mankind. 1

1

Dec. 28,

niteur, Feb.

Ann. Reg.

45.

tion in

Jan. 17,

1817.

The year 1817 commenced with an insurrection of a more serious character than had yet occurred in the InsurrecPeninsula. Unlike the preceding, it began not with the Valencia. soldiers, but the citizens. A trifling tax on coals excited a tumult in Valencia on the 17th January, which ere long assumed the character of an insurrection. At first the populace were successful; and during the whole of the 17th the city was, with the exception of the barracks, in their possession. They immediately proclaimed the Constitution of 1812; but their triumph was of short duration. General Elio, who commanded the garrison,

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