belled against my authority, and the municipalities of other large towns had followed the example. They required that I should condemn the conduct of ministers who had served me faithfully, and recognised rebellion as lawful; that I should annul, or at least suspend the law on the municipalities, after it had been voted by the Cortes, and that I should compromise the unity of the regency.

"I could not accept the first of these conditions without degrading myself in my own eyes; I could not accede to the second without acknowledging the right of force, which is not recognised by either divine or human laws, and the existence of which is incompatible with our constitution as with all constitutions; I could not accept the third without violating the constitution, which considers all that the Cortes have voted, and the supreme head of the state has sanctioned as law, and places beyond royal power a law which it has once sanctioned; I could not accept the fourth without, at the same time, accepting my own shame, without pronouncing my self-condemnation, and enervating the power which the king had confided to me, which the Cortes had since confirmed, and which had been preserved by me as a sacred deposit, which I had sworn not to deliver into the hands of the factions."

To this manifesto the provisional regency replied, by an equally long address on their part, to the Spanish nation, in which they showed the expediency and justice of those demands which the queen regent had refused to grant, and professed to lament the loss of a princess, from whom they might have expected much, if she had

kept herself superior to the influence of party. After stating and defending their own views and objects, they added a somewhat convincing argument in the following declaration :

--

"The constitution shall be religiously adhered to by all; public order shall not be violated; and if any person should attempt to do so, there are ready 200,000 veteran troops the national guards — the whole nation, in short-prepared to punish and repel the attempt. All the necessary precautions you could desire are already taken."

Queen Christina now abandoned, if she ever seriously intended, her journey to Naples, and having received sufficient intimation as to the nature of the reception she might expect to meet in Paris, she set out for the French ca pital, where shearrived at the latter end of November. An immense multitude was collected on the occasion, and she was met outside the city by Louis Philippe in his carriage, and received with military honours. When the royal party reached the Palais Royal, where apartments had been provided for her by the king, Louis Philippe alighted from his carriage, and conducted her to them. But the subsequent relations between the queen-mother (as the ex-queen regent was now called) and the court of the Tuilleries, and the events which were supposed to flow from them, will occupy a portion of our succeeding volume. The quarrel also that broke out at end of the year between Spain and Portugal, owing to the question of the navigation of the Douro, and in which England was appealed to by both nations, will be more conveniently discussed in our con

tinuation of the history of Spanish affairs.

PORTUGAL.-The Cortes were opened on the 2nd of January, by the queen in person. The royal speech expressed a regret that no treaty had been concluded with England for the "repression of the barbarous traffic in slaves;" and complained of the act which had been passed last year by the British parliament, authorising the capture of Portuguese vessels suspected of being employed in the slave-trade. While this slave-trade question was under discussion in the Cortes, the queen suddenly dissolved them on the 25th of February, and the new Cortes were summoned to meet on the 25th of May. On this day they were opened, and there was another speech from the throne, the contents of which were vague and unimportant. At the latter end of August a revolutionary spirit began to shew itself amongst various classes in Portugal, and assumed a most alarming feature, by spreading to the troops in garrison, at Abrantes, a telegraphic dispatch from that place, on the 28th of August, announced to the secretary at war, that the 6th regiment of the line, stationed at Castello Branco, had broken out into open meeting, and when orders were immediately given to some other troops to hold themselves in readiness to march; the officers of these last refused to obey, on the plea, that the privates could not be depended upon. Lieutenant-colonel M. A. da Sousa, the commandant of the 6th regiment, at Castello Branco, and lieutenant-colonel Justino Teixeira, military governor of

See ante vol. lxxxi. pp. 242, 255, and see APPENDIX.

the fortress of Marvao, issued a joint address to the Portuguese soldiers and citizens, declaring that it was the duty of all true Portuguese now to raise the cry of "Viva a Rainha a Senhora Donna Maria II, the constitution of 1838, and down with the ministry. This revolutionary manifesto stated that the ministry had sold themselves to foreigners, as had been demonstrated by the Portuguese embassies to England, and called upon all to arm themselves and drive away the "traitorous ministers by force, as their Spanish neighbours had recently done. The queen's government, however, acted with vigour. She herself immediately reviewed in the square at Lisbon, the troops which were without delay to quit the capital for Abrantes, and issued a proclamation to her army dated "Palace of Necessidades, August 30,” in which she called upon them as the former soldiers of her father, to follow her, who was the daughter of their general, and resist the attempts of the common enemies of their country,-whom the proclamation thus described, "know them well; their end is tyranny, which they wish to exercise in my name, usurping my rights, and rob me of the power which the constitution gives me, in order that I may not be able to protect you, afterwards to destroy you, and to the end that I may remain a slave in their hands, obliged to behold my people oppressed and destroyed, and sign decrees of proscription and death, with which they already threaten my most faithful defenders, who are also yours, and of the liberty of the nation."

This formidable insurrection lasted for three weeks, when it was terminated by the mutineers

themselves, in the following manner. On the 12th of September, the privates of the insurgent 6th battalion at Castello Branco, having in vain demanded from their colonel Miguel a da Souza, the colours of their regiment, in order that they might go and present them to general Antonio da Costa e Silva, who was commandant of the forces marching against them; and hearing that he was determined to go into Spain, shot him at the mayor's door, and then voluntarily returned to their allegiance and duty. The officers who had taken part in the revolt, with the exception of two or three, retired into Spain; and this act of the 6th regiment spreading dismay and mistrust amongst those who were disaffected, comparative tranquillity was soon restored.

On the 3rd of October, the queen Donna Maria II. gave birth to a daughter, which died soon afterwards, and the queen's life was for some time thought in danger. The chief subject of discussion in the Cortes was the claims of English subjects to compensation for the injury and loss sustained by them in Portugal, during the struggle between Don Miguel and the constitutional government; one of the committees drew up a protest against the British claims altogether.

NAPLES.-Unimportant as is the influence which the Neapolitan government exercises upon the general politics of Europe, a question arose in the spring of this year, between it and England, which led to hostilities on the part of the latter, and at one time threatened to involve other powers in a general quarrel. The cause of this was what was called "the sulphur monopoly." The facts of the case VOL. LXXXII,

are shortly as follows. By a treaty concluded in 1816, between Great Britain and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, certain commercial advantages were secured to the former country, and it was stipulated that the Neapolitan government should grant to no other state mercantile privileges disadvantageous to the interests of England; the spirit of the treaty being to place the commercial intercourse between the two countries on the most favourable footing for both.

In the month of June,

1838, the king of Naples granted to a company of private individuals, Taix, Ayeard, and Co., some of whom were natives of France, and others of different countries, a monopoly of all the sulphur produced and worked in Sicily. This being a most valuable article of commerce, the throwing the whole trade into the hands of a few favoured persons, was a serious injury to the mercantile community at large; and Great Britain considered the grant of the monopoly a direct infraction of the stipulations of the treaty of 1816. She accordingly remonstrated vigorously through Mr. Kennedy, the British chargé d'affaires at the court of Naples; and in July 1839, the king promised, that the monopoly should be abolished, and cease on or before the 1st of January, 1840. It however continued; and in February, of this year, a note written in energetic terms reached the British embassy at Naples, from lord Palmerston, calling on the Neapolitan government for the immediate termination of the monopoly, and full indemnity for all losses sustained by British subjects since its commencement.

The king professed to comply, and prince Cassaro, the minister for [P]

foreign affairs, wrote an official note to Mr. Kennedy, stating, that the monopoly should be abolished, and that his Neapolitan majesty acted thus in deference to England. A few days afterwards, Mr. Temple, the British minister, who had been absent in England for some time, returned to Naples, with full powers and instructions from lord Palmerston, to insist that the sulphur monopoly should be forthwith put an end to. He notified this to the government; and after the delay of a few days, it was announced to him, that the king in council had determined not to consent to the demands of Great Britain, and did not consider the sul phur contract a violation of the treaty of 1816. Prince Cassaro, however, considering his honour pledged by the note which he had written officially to Mr. Kennedy, refused to sign the communication to Mr. Temple, and sent in his resignation to the king, who immediately accepted it and sent him into exile at Foggia, a small town, about a hundred miles from Naples. The British government immediately prepared to enforce its demands, by sending orders to admiral sir R. Stopford, who commanded the fleet in the Mediterranean, to hold himself in readiness to commence active hostilitics against the Neapolitan flag. As to the right of England so to act there was some difference of opinion. The parties who were favourable to the monopoly, took the opinions of sir F. Pollock and Dr. Phillimore, who both considered it as no infraction of the treaty of 1816, on the ground that it applied equally to

the subjects of the king of Naples and all foreigners without distinction. This monopoly caused such a decline in the British trade in sulphur, that although previously it was of the average value of 35,000l. per annum, it became after the grant to the company too small for a return to be made by the Customs. The increase in cost also was above 200 per cent. On the 17th of April, the British ships of war in the vicinity of Naples commenced hostilities, and captured a number of Neapolitan vessels; and an embargo was laid on all in the ports of Malta, that bore the Sicilian flag. At first the king made preparations to resist, but the utter hopelessness of a contest with England, induced him finally to accept the proposed mediation of France, in adjusting the quarrel, on the principle that the monopoly should be dissolved, and an indemnity given to the contractors. And early in May amicable relations between the court of Naples and the British legation recommenced.

In April of this year, an abortive attempt was made in Sicily to bring about a revolution and establish the independence of that kingdom. Prince Charles of Capua, who had for some time resided in London, was proclaimed by the malcontents as their intended constitutional king; and expectations were entertained that the sulphur monopoly quarrel would induce England to support their enterprise. No important consequences however resulted, and the incipient revolution was soon suppressed.