ceeded by the neutral zeal of England, have thwarted many efforts of the Constitutionalists. But affairs are now changed in England. The Portuguese and the rest of Europe may at length believe in the sincerity of those conventional phrases in favour of liberty, which all Englishmen are bound to employ; but which the general policy of our government has, by some unaccountable fatality, for many a long year, found itself under the singular necessity of contradicting by its acts. We have seen the Portuguese, under the constitutional regency of Dona Maria, repel the irruptions from Spain before the arrival of British aid; and we therefore the more confidently expect to hear the same gallant persons practically contradict those sneers on Portuguese valour, and love of independence, which come with an ill grace from those who are generally considered to have been not a little instrumental in crushing it. At all events, be the result what it may, though our estimation of his subjects may vary, our opinion of Dom Miguel will remain unchanged. and the policy to be pursued towards him should be unalterable as his crimes. It will be time enough, when all struggles shall have ceased, should he, by any inscrutable provision of Providence, still come forth successfully from the trial, to consider what measures may be adopted towards him. But for the present, and for many a day after, all is hushed in grim repose;' it would be treason to the cause of honour and liberty, as well as of morality and justice, to talk of recognising the 'usurper, who has held up his perjured and bloody hands so 'contemptuously in the face of the civilized world.'

Spain, fresh from the slaughter of her additional victims, will naturally feel a lively interest in these proceedings; but we have as little fear of her open aggression, as we have doubt of the tendency and activity of her intrigues. Indeed, the active interference of Spain would cause the deliverance of Portugal, for it would be a glad signal for the aid of England and of France.

The interest of England evidently leans to the restoration of Dona Maria, as the only honourable means of re-opening that friendly and mutually beneficial intercourse that has subsisted between the two countries for centuries. It is a mere sophism (not to mention the baseness of the motive, supposing it true) that urges the value of this intercourse as a reason for recognising the usurper. Interests and institutions are so widely changed in Europe, that the liberal Portugal, which might be now a most serviceable ally to this country, would, under Dom Miguel, and with his institutions, be a heavy clog upon our policy. His usurpation is the bar that separates the long descend

ed friendship of the two countries. There is a wide distinction to be made between Portugal and her tyrant. Had our past intercourse been less free with the one, were our desires for its intimate renewal less sincere, we might not recoil with such repugnance from the thoughts of the permanence of the authority of the other. But by as much as England is unwilling to contemplate a mere formal distant intercourse with her ancient ally, by so much does she loath the idea of recognising her dishonoured usurper. Her hostility to Dom Miguel is the test of her regard for Portugal.

But in truth the commercial value of Portugal to this country lives upon tradition. When India was not ours-when a few hardy and enterprising colonists formed the acorn from whence the wide-spreading oak of the United States has grown; when Canada was French, and poor and thinly inhabited; and our West Indian trade comparatively trifling-then Portugal was flourishing; and in addition to her possessions in India and Africa and the Isles,' afforded the only channel through which British commerce could find its way to the Brazils, and other rich portions of South America. In those days the commerce of Portugal was indeed most important to this country; but now, and particularly at the present moment, it is but as the sandy bed of some broad river, whose springs have been dried up, and whose scanty waters creep unseen into the vast ocean of British wealth. That country, which in 1700 engaged one-seventh of the commerce of England, now participates in less than onehundredth part. But these at best are mercenary arguments; and Portugal possesses higher claims to the attention of this country than her mere commercial ability. She has the sacred tie of ancient friendship, and long conferred mutual benefits. From her position, too, she is the weight by which we may adjust the balance of French and Spanish politics; and her value as an ally, should England unfortunately be again engaged in a naval war, will be understood by a single glance at a map of the world. But, we repeat, the force of these considerations depends on the government which shall exist in Portugal;-upon that which now exists no reliance whatever can, or could ever be placed, until England found herself once more leagued with the Tory faction of Europe. We pray that such a day may be far distant. We have no wish to see this highly artificial, because highly civilized country, let loose the four winds of discord on the continent, and preach with a suicidal enthusiasm, license and anarchy, under the mask of liberty. We heartily deprecate any such attempts; and therefore, however earnestly we may look for the liberation of Por

tugal, we have no desire to witness, much less to counsel, any such system of Propagandism, on the part of this country. All we call for is fair play and good wishes; and we indulge the pleasing hope, that ere another year revolve, right will have conquered fraud, and the honoured crown of the House of Braganza be restored to the lawful brow: then may unhappy and now decaying Portugal find an abiding refuge from her many years of revolution and misery. She may re-enter the pale of European intercourse, and, with a constitution adapted to her wants and her intelligence, find peace and reviving prosperity. And then, also, those who accuse us of deserting the ancient allies of this country, may, with shame or with joy, according as party spirit or patriotism predominates in their minds, confess that his Majesty's present Ministers have been the best friends both of Portugal and of England.

We have now gone through the long history of the anarchy which has prevailed in Portugal for these last ten years. This was necessary for a right comprehension of the subject; and for an exposition of that mistaken policy, which, with some few deviations, has been every where pursued by this country. Proud and boastful of the enjoyment of a rational liberty, superior to that of the rest of Europe, England has, nevertheless, with a perverse and contradictory spirit, chosen to ally herself with the despotic, instead of the liberal spirit of the age: (we use neither of the words with an evil interpretation.) She has acted as if, with an accusing conscience, she believed there was something dangerous in liberty, something safe in tyranny,-that the one had, after great exertions, only a claim for toleration, while the other had a constant right to be defended,-and that she must assist (if she ever did assist) liberty by stealth, and in the dark, as though she were committing an offence that required explanation in the eyes of Europe. And in truth so it did, so long as we chose to ally ourselves with those who were its declared enemies. The British Ministers who patronised this policy, had two contending feelings to reconcile,-the love of freedom, inherent in the breast of this country,-its hatred, as natural to the understandings of their imperial allies; they were therefore compelled to follow the crab-like diagonal policy, of which we have exposed a fair sample in the case of Portugal. The same oblique line may be traced in their other foreign relations. It is as impossible that it should have been otherwise, so long as they pursued this contradictory policy, as it is in mechanics that a diagonal motion should not be the result of two diverse forces.

But a change has now taken place; and this country is no longer ashamed to declare, that while she respects all thrones, she prefers the right hand of freedom to the right or left hand,call it which you will,-of despotism. With the one she may have, with the other she never can have, a lasting unity of interests. England and France are at the head of the one; the shattered fragments of the Holy Alliance form the bond of the other party in Europe. There are many persons in this country, who, from prejudice, or from party feelings, or from want of reflection, entertain those dishonouring opinions concerning liberty which influenced the whole course of our late policy; and we are therefore not surprised at the evil eye with which they regard the growth and the striking of the roots of freedom in France. We can pardon them this; but we cannot so lightly pass over the sanguinary and unchristian spirit which seeks to place these two neighbours, and now companions,-these mighty leaders of the civilisation of the European world, in everlasting array against each other. Divide and rule, is an old adage; and we are prepared to expect the wily perseverance with which our late Holy Alliance associates will seek to embroil the two countries. Their hatred of liberty is natural, for it saps the very foundations of their absolute power. They abominate it in England, but the evil here is irremediable; and they have hitherto borne with it on the tacit convention-upon, in as far as we are concerned, the cowardly understanding-that we shall abstain from all encouragement of its growth abroad; that we shall leave it to be reaped and garnered by the tender husbandry of their sanatory cordons and armies. Such Laybach provisions were for a while sufficient. But the Polignac ministry too eagerly commenced their harvest at home; and the rich corn they would have cut down escaped from their hands, and has produced seed an hundred-fold. The Metternich school are in consequence alarmed, and with reason. They were about to renew against France the days of Pilnitz, and to make a vigorous effort to crush the hydra in its infancy, when gallant, unhappy, devoted Poland,-that dismembered country which owes nothing to Europe but execrations, arose, as of old, in the hour of danger, and with her own ruin stayed the northern torrent. We owe much of our present peace to her. She gave time to France to rally her convulsed forces, and taught the enemies of liberty to reconsider their position. Now they dare not, however much they may desire, to undertake a general movement against their offending neighbour;-the internal state of their own dominions will not permit so dangerous an experiment. England, too, has deserted them. They cast many a longing lingering look

back to the days of her high Toryism; and their grey-headed elders evoke in vain the days when, with loans without number, she rushed into coalitions without thought. Those spendthrift days are past, the Holy Alliance knows it, to its grief; but its members are not the less active in their exertions against the consolidation of liberty in France. Once firmly rooted there, they foresee a certain spreading of its branches; and therefore we shall see them, with the tenacity of persons contending for all they hold dear, put in practice every possible intrigue by which they may excite troubles in France; whether it be by the support of Carlists, or Bonapartists, or Republicans. Nor will they rest satisfied with such attempts alone. We shall find them stirring up difficult and invidious questions in Belgium, in Holland, in Greece, in Portugal,—or wherever else they fancy some happy moot point may bring England and France in collision. That such a policy may be expected from many courts of Europe, and must be most carefully and temperately guarded against, it would be difficult to deny. But it is with shame and sorrow unfeigned, we add, that this wariness must be exercised not only against foreign courts, but against certain domestic politicians, who have hitherto allowed few opportunities of playing into the hands of the Holy Alliance to escape them.

But let his Majesty's present Ministers steadily pursue their straight-forward line of policy;-let them, in honesty and good faith, give the right hand of fellowship to that great nation, whose valour, whose intelligence, whose civilisation, whose freedom, and whose proximity, render her the most fit ally of this great country. Let them, in the conduct of public affairs, avoid that which all generous minds abhor in private life, the making friends and companions of the unworthy. In this manly spirit, let them cultivate the friendship and familiar alliance of France; let them rejoice over the restoration of liberty in Portugal; and while they place themselves in line with those countries whose institutions most accord with their own, let them at the same time honourably maintain their relations with all states, and discountenance every attempt at a proselyting spirit of liberalization. And then, when the friends of the Holy Alliance taunt them with truckling to France, they will tell them that England is too proud to be afraid to make any country, however powerful, her friend.