disregarded-and the Whig ministry submits to the double indignity! But though we doubt their courage to use it, we can give them a hint that would enable men of honour and spirit to settle this matter by return of post-the recognition of Louis Philippe was on the express condition of his keeping the engagements as to Algiers let him be told that if he will not perform his part, we are released from ours! What he will not or cannot do, Henry the Fifth may !

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III. Italy. We have been at first duped, and afterwards persuaded to allow France to seize, by a mixture of fraud and force, the most important point on the Adriatic shores of Italy; and her occupation of Ancona, by a species of burglarious entry in the night, has not only outraged all public faith and all European interests, but it has, in a more particular manner, counterbalanced and endangered British authority in the Mediterranean. is well known, that on the very day on which this expedition sailed, M. C. Perrier, then prime minister of France, most distinctly assured our credulous cabinet that no such expedition existed, or was designed; and this most monstrous breach not merely of international faith, but of individual pledge from one cabinet to another, has been acquiesced in, and, for aught we can see, tamely and timidly acquiesced in, by a British ministry.

It is equally important and curious to observe, that just at the same moment, when we might have expected to have heard the strongest remonstrances against the fraud, violence, and falsehood of France in thus seizing the chief fortress of the Pope the most essentially neutral, and certainly the least aggressive sovereign in the world-we, on the contrary, took that favourable opportunity to send a minister to Rome-the first Englishman, we believe, who ever assumed any public character there-who, instead of any excuses for the violence already perpetrated, or any assurance of protection from further depredation, published a kind of manifesto against the papal government; and, under the pretence of recommending a representative system-(a representative system under an infallible pontiff!)-expatiated on every topic that was likely to create a revolt in the papal territories and a general conflagration in Italy. It was not enough to connive at the seizure of Ancona, we must also identify ourselves with the principles of France; our envoy acted as if he had been the missionary of the Parisian Society for propagating revolutions throughout the world.' And, lest any circumstances of folly should be wanting in addition to the mischief, the person selected for this mission was our resident at Florence, whose character and consideration at that court could not fail to be raised by his being abstracted from his ordinary duties to play the part of Massaniello

in the great Italian drama, which we must suppose our ministry meditated. But-it may be asked, cui bono all this?-Why should a British ministry, with already enough to disarrange abroad, and more than enough to mismanage at home, permit itself to be entangled in these additional difficulties, and to be committed with these new and extraordinary extensions of French domination? We know not. Is it insanity, or, what seems to us almost equivalent, a love or a fear of France? France has some old scores to wipe off with us; and have our ministers discreetly consented to allow her to repay herself from others, claims which they dare not discharge themselves? Insensible as we are to all matters of foreign policy, and regardless as we seem to be of all colonial and commercial interests, it would not yet have been safe to have ceded Gibraltar or Malta. The ambition of our new friend must, therefore, be satisfied with what we can just now manage to give her— Algiers as a counterbalance to Gibraltar, and Ancona as a substitute for Malta.

IV. Greece. We have allowed her army to occupy Greece, to take the merit of the settlement of that country, if it be settled, or, in the alternative, to reap the advantage of its not being settled; and as a preliminary step to this, we have been forward in reducing the power, and of course in accelerating the overthrow of our ancient ally, the Turk-to the great profit and security, no doubt, of our Levant and Indian trade. And for this desirable end, we have allied ourselves with Bavaria, almost the only power in the world whose alliance can be of no use to us; and in the alleged distress of our own finances, we have guaranteed our share of a loan of sixty millions of livres to make Prince Otho King of Greece-a German King of Greece! This loan, it was alleged, was absolutely necessary to set the new kingdom a-going, and to provide for the unavoidable and pressing exigencies of a new government; yet, if we are not misinformed, a fifth of the whole loan (12,000,000 livres) has been diverted from its intended, its urgent, its necessary purposes, to purchase from the Turks some insignificant, and perhaps injurious, alteration of the mountain boundary of the new kingdom, which all parties had accepted, and which they had solemnly bound themselves to observe. And this is called improving the frontier by a successful negociation!

V. Turkey. After inflicting our utmost vengeance on the Pasha of Egypt, for having, according to his duty and allegiance, assisted his sovereign in the Greek contest, and on that sovereign for accepting the aid of his subject, affairs have been so dexterously managed, that the sovereign and subject have been involved in direct hostilities against each other. The victorious arms of Ibrahim have threatened the very existence of the Otto

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man empire; which has obtained a momentary and disgraceful respite by the occupation of Constantinople by a Russian army !— and the ambitious visions of Catherine-the very glimpse of which, in the affair of Oczakow, had occasioned the indignation and alarm of western Europe, and, above all, of England herself-have been now realized and brought to the very verge of success,-to the certainty of accomplishment, whenever Russia may be (as we think, so ill) advised as to wish for such a consummation. It is, however, but justice to Russia to say, that, if we are well informed, she has all along warned us of the approach of this crisis, and urged us, while yet there was full time, to interpose our influence to prevent the enterprise of the Pasha; but our ambassador to the Porte found the climate and society of Naples * too agreeable to be exchanged for the dull monotony of Pera-and we ourselves were better employed in prostrating Holland at the feet of France. It was not till the Russians-not being able to awake us—came forward themselves, that we began to rub our eyes and wonder at seeing the eagle hovering over the minarets of Constantinople :-so that in very truth, we-we alone-are responsible for the present state of affairs in that quarter.

VI. Poland.—We have never been among those who have been very sanguine of the policy, or even the possibility, of Polish independence. We fancy that we see in the geographical position and moral condition of Poland, that she possesses neither the natural nor the political consistence, which is necessary to a substantial sovereign state. She has been, in her best days, a combination of provinces rather than a substantive nation, and we doubt whether she ever can be one; and, with this doubt, we have seen with pain the successive efforts which she has made for independence, which we have thought a vain and unprofitable waste of her riches, her blood, and her spirit. But if we were of the opinions which his majesty's ministers, and their most influential supporters in both houses profess, not only on the general question of liberalism throughout Europe, but of the special claims of the Polish insurrection to the sympathy, if not the support, of all free peoples; if we say, we partook in these opinions, we should ask our ministers

*The protracted stay of Lord Ponsonby at Naples-(he had been gazetted ambassador to the Porte on the 9th November, 1832, and did not leave Naples till April, 1833)-produced an observation in the House of Commons, the ministerial reply to which must, we hope, have been misreported, for it stated what we believe to be untrue that his lordship's delay was occasioned by the detention by contrary winds of the frigate which was to convey him.' Now we have heard that the Acteon frigate, Captain the Honourable W. Grey, was some weeks if not months at Naples, and might have sailed almost any day during that time, and did, in fact, frequently sail-on parties of pleasure. Lord Ponsonby is the brother-in-law, and Captain Grey the son, of the Prime Minister, and therefore, we suppose, we shall hear of no more inquiries on so disagreeable a subject. We can only say that the delay, however caused, was most unforunate.

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how they have testified that sympathy, and given effect to those opinions? A zealous Polish partisan might have expected that they should have utterly broken with Russia on this point; but, at all events, they might have preserved at least neutrality; and such a neutrality as they have practised towards Holland, towards Italy, towards Portugal, would have been just as favourable to the Poles as it has been useful to the insurgents in other countries. But instead of throwing their neutrality (a much more formidable weapon than their hostility) into the scale for Poland, our ministers have absolutely and directly helped her antagonist, by advancing to the Emperor of Russia, in the crisis of the contest, all that he wanted to secure his success-a subsidy-under the colour of the Russian-Dutch loan; and this was done not only in bitter derision, as it were, of their professions of good-will towards Poland, but in the most impudent defiance of our own treaties, our own law, and our own interests. But the truth is, that though they sympathized with the Polish insurrection as an insurrection against an established sovereign, they had an insurrection nearer to us, and dearer to France, to foster in the Netherlands, and the Dutch loan was paid to Russia to induce this power to connive at the injustice which France and England were perpetrating against the Dutch

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VII. Portugal.-We reserve, for the conclusion of this series of blunders and bad faith, our conduct towards Portugal; of which, as a matter that, by a concurrence of circumstances, has become implicated with our internal interests, we must take a more detailed view. Whether the right to the crown of Portugal belongs to Dom Miguel or Dona Maria is, abstractedly, a question in which England has no immediate concern; but it must naturally have so much effect on public opinion, and has been made, on the part of the present ministers, so main an ingredient in the defence of their flagrant partiality to one side, that it is necessary, to a right understanding of the subject, to state-which we shall do shortly, but we hope clearly-that preliminary part of the case.

John VI., king of Portugal and Brazil, had two sons, Pedro and Miguel, and two or three daughters. Pedro is married, and has a son and daughters, of whom Dona Maria is the eldest. There is no question, that if Dom John had died in the sovereignty of the united kingdom of Portugal and Brazil, Pedro would have succeeded to the united throne, and after him his son, and that neither Dona Maria nor Dom Miguel would have had any right whatever. King John and his whole family had retired to the Brazils on the French invasion of Portugal; but, on the settlement of Europe, he returned, leaving his eldest son, Dom Pedro, regent of Brazil, and as such, Dom Pedro,

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at his installation in that office, took a solemn oath of allegiance to the king, his father, and to the crown of Portugal. Actuated, however, by the same spirit which had spread over other parts of the South American continent, Brazil soon showed symptoms of a design to cast off the nominal yoke of the mother country, and to proclaim its own independence. This design was communicated by the regent Dom Pedro to the king his father, in a letter, dated 4th Oct. 1821, in the following words :—

It is wished to secure the independence through me and the troops; but by neither have those ends been obtained; nor shall they be: because my honour and that of the troops is a greater object than the whole of the Brazil. They (the independent party) wished, and still say they wish, to proclaim me emperor. I protest to your Majesty, I will never be a PERJURER; that I never will be false to you; and that they may do so mad an act if they choose, but it shall not be till after I and all the Portuguese shall have been cut to pieces. This is what I swear to your Majesty; at the same time writing in this letter, with my own blood, the following words :-" I swear to be ever faithful to your Majesty, to the Portuguese nation and constitution." (Juro sempre ser fiel a V. M., a naçao, et a constituçao Portugueza).' No doubt, Dom Pedro was at this period, and in these sentiments, sincere, and had no desire to exchange the not-distant prospect of the ancient and settled throne of Portugal for the slippery and imperfect sovereignty of the proposed empire of Brazil; but local circumstances became too strong for either his personal wishes or his public engagements-Brazil declared itself an independent empire, and the ties between it and the mother country being thus, de facto, cut for ever, Dom Pedro considered himself justified-in spite of his original oath of allegiance, and the recent oath written with his own blood-in accepting, on his own behalf and that of his children, (his eldest child and heir presumptive, observe, being at that time Dona Maria-his son not being yet born,) the style and office of Constitutional Emperor of Brazil.' This occurred in May 1822.

What then became the state of the Portuguese succession?By the laws of the Cortes of Lamego-the fundamental act of thePortuguese monarchy-it was provided, that none but a Portuguese could come to the crown of Portugal. It was, therefore, under this ancient law tolerably clear that Pedro, by thus accepting the sovereignty of the Brazilian empire, which was not only separate and independent, but had actually declared and waged WAR against Portugal-had ceased to be a Portuguese.'

But all doubt on this point is removed by another more recent, but not less fundamental law of Portugal. On the re-establishment of the kingdom under the house of Braganza, in 1640, a

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