* Thus the situation of the Prince of Asturias, in his father's court, was one of entire dependence ; it was sweetened by no enjoyment, it was redeemed by none of that political importance which his near relation to the throne ought to have given him ; for every consideration of this kind yielded to the irresistible power, the oriental luxury, and the unbounded patronage of the Prince of the Peace. The Queen, who foresaw the misfortunes which might happen to her favourite, if the Prince of Asturias should ever open his eyes upon his situation, and endeavour to recover the rank and influence which of right belonged to him, put into active operation all the means which she could derive from her intriguing character, her treasures, and her uncontrolled power in the court of Charles IV. in order to persecute her first-born son, and to trouble and embitter the tenour of his life. Hence sprang a domestic war, of which the nation could not be an indifferent spectator. Although it cannot be said that the country was divided into two political par. ties, yet two opinions prevailed, which made themselves sufficiently apparent. One of these was favourable to the Prince of the Peace, the other to the Prince of Asturias. On the side of the former were naturally ranged the greater number of the ambitious, all the high public officers, and a few political optimists, who expected that the favourite would introduce considerable reforms and changes into the public institutions. But the great mass of the nation, who, on one hand, had witnessed the disorder and the misfortunes in which the government was involved from the time that Godoy directed the helm, and on the other sympathized in the uphappy fate of a prince destined in the course of time to occupy the Spanish throne, became every day more and more attached to him, and gathered together by degrees those elements of exasperation and of hatred, which were calculated, sooner or later, to produce a decisive explosion.' pp. 1–3.

The condition of the Spanish nation at this moment, is described as combining the most flagitious state of morals with political corruption and degradation.

All ideas of morality were subverted amongst the higher classes; public decency was sacrificed to the rage for aggrandizement, and to the desire of paying homage to the idol of the day. The sovereign, who appeared before the eyes of his subjects covered with that peculiar disgrace which is insupportable even to men of the

lowest degree, sanctioned either by his sufferavce or his neglect, those very disorders which were most incompatible with the welfare of the community. Corruption stalked through the land with frightful strides. It was the only means, by which objects of ambition, and even sometimes the ends of justice, were attained. The husband

sold his wife, the father his daughter, the brother his sister. The public employments, the riches of the State, the favour of the King, were all in the hands of one man, who distributed them according to the suggestion of his passions, or the momentary caprices of his fancy. The tribunals pronounced no sentence without previously

consulting his interests or his inclinations; and the clergy, who have since dared to invoke the assistance of Heaven, in order to erkindle a fratricidal war, placed on the altars the image of Godoy next to that of the Son of God. The course of public affairs, and the management of all the departments whicho form the systemu of government, followed the impulse which they received from the centre of all these disorders. Confusion in the administration, arbitrary proceedings on the part of those who exercised any authority, the necessity of sustaining an illegitimate power by violent and perfidious means, the plunder of the national treasury by a man insatiable of wealth, and persecutions carried on against distinguished persons, who had endeavoured to oppose themselves to this torrent of public calamity, were so many circumstances from which an attentive observer might perceive the approach of one of those crises by which nations are regenerated or overthrown.' pp 4,5.

Thus far, the Writer's testimony supports the general accuracy of the picture drawn by Dr. Southey in his history of the Peninsular War, except that he gives a less unfavourable view of the character of the clergy, and dwells more on the vices of the lower orders. Now, it may be questioned whether a nation has ever been regenerated' under such circumstauces by a revolution : many have been overthrown. Revolutions have rarely been brought about on a large scale, except under one of the three following circumstances ; à usurpation of the crown by a' fortunate soldier' or by means of the army, the intervention of a foreign power,-or the concurrence of the aristocracy and the clergy. In the first case, there is only a transfer of the crown, and the nation is passive : such changes, however, have often been productive of lasting benefit to the people, since usurpers have found it expedient to ingratiate themselves with their subjects by wise laws and popular concessions. To Richard II), and to Cromwell, England is more indebted than to most of her sovereigns, and Bonaparte has done more for France than all her Bourbons since Henri Quatre. King Joachim and King Joseph would, in like manner, have deserved well of their subjects, if they had reigned long enough to be legitimate. In the event of revolutions brought about by a foreign interference, the people are seldom, if ever, the gainers; and the worst usurpations are less calamitous for a nation, than the best of restorations, Aristocratic revolutions have for the most part been the mere triumph of one party over another at the expense of the people. When a revolution has succeeded in the hands of the people, it has taken place under the commanding influence of motives which imply a high degree of intelligence and moral feeling, ạnd with the concurrence of their religious teachers. Such were the circumstances attending the origin of Swiss inde

a

pendence, the struggle of the Scotch for religious liberty, and the emancipation of British America. But a nation cannot, in the nature of things, be regenerated by a political change, except as its ultimate consequence may be favourable to the diffusion of knowledge and the light of evangelical truth. Spain, therefore, was not in a condition that admitted of a revolution, originating with the people, that should have remedied the disorders of the State. The nation had one common feeling, hatred of a foreign invader ; but with the views and feelings of the patriot, the common people had no sympathy. The Absolute King was their idol, and the clergy were his priests.

There were, however, at this time, patriotic Spaniards, although events have made it but too clear that they formed a small part of the nation, who saw in its true light, and feelingly deplored, the degraded state of their country, and who were ready to hail any change as necessarily for the better. So exaspe ted were their minds by the oppression of Godoy, the imbecility of the doting monarch, the shameless conduct of the Queen, the disorders in the administration, and the alarming defalcations in the public finances, that when, in consequence of the secret convention of 1807, French troops proceeded to occupy the Peninsula, they were generally received as liberators and beneficent friends.

Information,' we are told, ' was pretty widely diffused amongst the different classes of society, notwithstanding the opposing influence of the clergy, and the rigorous prohibitions of the Inquisition; vague desires and plans of extensive political reform were warmly entertained by many ; the spectacle of the riches and preponderance of the French nation stimulated the pride of the country, and hence arose a general opinion, that the presence of those armies could not be otherwise than productive of auspicious consequences, and of great and salutary alterations. Well-informed Spaniards were anxious to see freedom of worship established in their country; they wished for a national representation-a judicial administration founded upon wisdom, a system of public economy, and all those social iniprovements which the cultivation of reason has wrought in modern communities ; and they fondly imagined that all these blessings would be a necessary consequence of the entry of the French armies.

Those armies, to a much greater number than had been stipulated for in the convention, spread themselves over Old Castille, Navarre, Biscay, and Catalonia, and took possession of the principal fortified places in all these provinces, without meeting the slightest opposition, Wherever they appeared, they were well received by the inhabitants, particularly those of the higher classes, who entertained them sumptuously, and lived with them in the most perfect harmony. In the beginning, the people had no complaint to make of their violence, or want of discipline. If a French soldier committed the least excess, he

was severely punished on the spot by his superior officers. The latter endeavoured, by every means in their power, to win the good opinion both of the Spanish people and army, who, far from receiving the French troops with hostility, entertained hopes that their organization and discipline, would serve as a model to the Spanish ministry, for putting the armed force of Spain upon an equal footing.' pp. 19, 20.

Had Bonaparte at this crisis, instead of employing perfidy and violence, instead of kidnapping the royal family, and massacring the citizens of Madrid,-endeavoured to gain over the enlightened part of the nation to his interest, by holding out the prospect of political freedom under an elective monarch who should have governed according to the ancient forms of Spain, had he employed the seductive arts of corruption to any thing like the extent that they have been plied on the recent invasion of the Peninsula,-and had be commenced the cautious development of his plans, by obtaining for the monarch elect, the rank and consideration of a grandee of the empire; it is highly probable that he would have succeeded in seating his brother on the throne of Spain, and his name might have gone down to posterity as the greatest benefactor of that long. enslaved nation. For, in that case, his own crown would, probably, never have been wrested from him, and Bernadotte would not now be the only one of all his marshals who ranks among the legitimate sovereigns of Europe. But his hatred of England, which rendered him so peculiarly anxious to avail him-. self of the harbours and maritime resources of the Peninsula, in order to perfect his insane system of blockade, precipitated him into violent measures as impolitic as they were unprincipled; and these eventually led to his own destruction.

But, while we blame the folly and wickedness of Bonaparte, it is impossible not to reflect with bitterness on the fine opportunity which was afforded to another Power, of becoming the benefactor of Spain-that Power which, betraying by her. misguided councils the cause which her armies had saved, bartered away for empty compliments her high character among the nations, and employed the military talents of Wellington and the sinister diplomacy of Castlereagh, in setting up again Dagon, and Baal, and Moloch,-the Pope, the Bourbons, and the Inquisition.

The present work throws much light on 'the circumstances connected with the tumult at Aranjuez, and the abdication of Charles in favour of his son, over which there hung a considerable degree of mystery. It is stated, that Godoy, pressed by the approach of the French and the hatred of the people, proposed the removal of the royal family to Seville, and thence to Mexico, and it was this which roused alike the courtiers and

the populace to make common cause with the Prince of Asturias. Charles signed the decree of abdication on the 19th of March, 1808, and

Ferdinand was proclaimed king by a people intoxicated with joy, and full of the most sanguine hopes. The public enthusiasm was equally great at Madrid, where the inhabitants had plundered the houses of Godoy and his principal dependents. Soon after, it be came still more fervent, when it was seen that the young king conferred the highest offices in the government upon the most liberal and enlightened men in Spain, who had been banished and persecuted on account of the severity with which they had censured the measures and abuses of the favourite.' p. 34.

It is not necessary to search for any other explanation of Ferdinand's conduct in this instance, than his just hatred of that execrable minion. On the 21st, only two days after his signing the decree of abdication by the unanimous advice of his ministers, Charles signed a solemn protest against that act, under the combined influence, it is conjectured, of Maria Louisa and the Queen of Etruria, the declared enemy of • Ferdinand, and the intimate friend of Godoy. At the same time he wrote to Napoleon, throwing himself implicitly upon his protection. In a letter addressed to Murat, this imbecile old man earnestly requests him to interfere to procure the liberation of the Prince of Peace, who suffers only because he is the friend of France.' The poor Prince of Peace' is evidently the uppermost thought in the minds both of the virtuous Maria Louisa and her amiable daughter. The style of cringing baseness in which they flatter their dear friend the Grand Duke of Berg, in the letters contained in the Appendix, is truly disgusting. Godoy owed his life to Ferdinand. At the request of his father, he rescued him from the enraged populace. He told him,' writes the Queen, with a tone of command as if he were the king, "I grant you your life." The Prince of the Peace, in spite of his wounds, thanked him.' The wounds and the tone of command were remembered by the Queen: the act was forgotten. The following are some of the expressions in which she gives vent to her malignant hatred of that son, in whom she saw only the rival of her paramour: they are addressed to this same Grand Duke of Berg.

His character is false, nothing affects him; he is void of feeling, little disposed to clemency; he is led by evil counsellors, and ambition, which rules him, will prompt him to do any thing. He makes promises, but he does not always perform them. In my opinion the Grand Duke ought to take measures to prevent the Prince of the