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To make the fraud practicable, the Spanish government and its agents had committed something very like forgery, and what, in every civilized country, is clearly punishable as swindling. Every one of the inscriptions of rente making up these six millions, although truly made under the clandestine decree of 1824, and creating a new debt, bore, on its face, that it was issued in virtue of the decree of December, 1825, authorizing the conversion of the loan of 1823. In short, the Spanish government said to itself, " our credit is so utterly gone, that we cannot effect an ostensible loan, either in London, Amsterdam, or Paris. We even find it difficult to keep up, however feebly, the royal loan. Let it be announced, then, that the rentes perpetuelles about to be issued are nothing more than the counter value of the bonds of the royal loan: let that be even specified on the inscriptions themselves. The public will fancy, that, far from burthening our credit with the weight of a new debt, we merely take away from circulation an onerous currency, to replace it by a more convenient one. The French ministry will believe in the utility of the operation, and will most certainly permit the prices of the new security to be inserted in the Cours Authentique. When once this is obtained, the business is done." No more direct fraud, no more shameless raising of money on false pretences, could well be conceived. It was an insult to the French government; for the French government had authorized the quotation only of a rente proceeding from the conversion of a known and specific loan; while Spain, under that denomination and disguise, had thrown into the market a new loan, and created

a new debt, of which Europe had never heard. To Spain herself the advantage was, that, by fraud, she had succeeded in raising money which those, whom she cheated, would never have lent, if they had thought she was borrowing. The evils were, the utter annihilation of any fragments of character or credit which might still linger about her-the burthening herself with a new debt, instead of being relieved by the merging of an already existing debt in one of a lighter kind-an increased necessity of obtaining new dupes, and cheating more extensively, with the impossibility of any longer duping even the veriest of simpletons. The Spanish treasury did not blush to assert that the " minimum of its revenues exceeded its annual expenditure;" and as, apparently, no new debt was contracted, the regular payment of the interest on the royal loan gave countenance to the representation. This, too, had been mere deception. The Spanish government had never sent a sous to Paris for the payment of interest, sinking fund, or redemption of the unconverted bonds. To fulfil these engagements it had just borrowed more money from the Parisians by creating a new debt, the obligations for which expressly bore that it was not a new debt at all. In this way, a new debt of 130,000,000 of francs had been secretly created, while the former, and only known debt, still remained to the extent of 65,000,000.

ITALY. His Holiness Pope Leo. XII., Hannibal della Genga, died at Rome on the 10th of February, at the age of sixty-nine, after an illness of five days. He had filled the papal chair for only five years and a half, having been elected in September, 1823, and the brief period of his pontificate had not been characterized by any striking display of ability, or marked by any interesting occurrence. He had headed the ceremonies of aju a jubilee; he had increased the staff of the church by creating many bishops with real or with nominal sees, and had made a considerable number of cardinals. In his transactions with foreign powers, he had shewn a disposition to maintain and exalt the rights of his triple crown, but had always yielded to their firmness and resolution. In the Netherlands a Protestant king had successfully asserted against him his right to regulate the ecclesiastic seminaries of his Catholic subjects; in France the power of the Jesuits had been curtailed by the force of public opinion, contrary to his own expressed wishes, and the inclinations of a court, willing, in this respect, to support him; and in South America he had listened to the demands of the new republics to consecrate their bishops, although he thereby incurred the displeasure of Ferdinand, the best-beloved son of the Catholic church.

On the 23rd of February, the conclave assembled to elect a successor. After it had sat nominally for thirty-six days, its choice fell on Cardinal Francis Xavier Castiglione, who was elected on the 31st of March, by forty-eight votes out of fifty. He was a native of Cingoli; he was already sixtyeight years old, and assumed the pontifical title of Pius VIII. From the indemnity ordinarily published by a new Pope on his election, he excepted political offenders, who were compared to assassins, undeserving of the clemency of even the compassionate church; and one of the first acts of his power was laying the town of Imola under a sentence of excommunication, on account of a tumultuous attack made on the house of the archbishop of that place, the perpetrators of which the citizens had shewn no anxiety to detect. They took the sentence, however, very easily; it excited little of the alarm which would haveaccompanied its announcement two centuries earlier; and they patiently waited, without seeming to feel much horror or privation, till it should please the holy father to remove it.

CHAP. Χ.

THE NETHERLANDS. - Dissensions between the Ministry and the States General-Progress of the War in Batavia. - GERMANYBRUNSWICK.- Decision of the Diet in the Quarrel between the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Hanover.

THE Session of the States General of the kingdom of the Netherlands, in the present year, was less tranquil and satisfactory, than any that had been held since the Restoration. Though the king himself continued to be popular, his government had produced very general dissatisfaction by some obnoxious measures, particularly by dismissing judges who were supposed to be too obstinate, and by exercising a great degree of severity against the press, when it happened to criticise the policy of the administration When the States General assembled, the second Chamber was immediately occupied in discussing the contents of petitions, recommending improvements in the existing system of government. These petitions amounted to 150 in number, and were subscribed by great bodies of people, calling for the institution of juries, the independence of judges, the responsibility of ministers, freedom of public instruction, and the strict execution of the concordat. A motion was made to refer all these petitions to the government, backed with the sanction of the Chamber, as to their urgency and importance. This proposition was resisted by the ministers, who, on the division, were left in a mi

nority of forty-three to fifty-six. In the discussion, however, of the individual propositions which grew out of these petitions, its opposition was more successful. A new law was passed for the regulation of the press, more liberal than the system which, during the preceding year, had excited loud complaints; but it was still very far from being satisfactory to the public mind, inasmuch as the government successfully resisted the proposal, that cases of alleged abuse of the liberty of the press should be tried by a jury. It opposed itself likewise to a motion for the introduction of grand juries, and for the extension of jury trials to the provincial courts, and other criminal tribunals; and both of these motions were lost. On the other hand, a numerous body in the Chamber censured every measure of the government, and resisted every project of its ministers; and the session closed, having rather added to, than diminished, the excitement and dissatisfaction which, for some time, had been growing up in the public mind.

This dissatisfaction had partly arisen from the great expense incurred in carrying on the war in Batavia, and the ill success with which that war had hitherto been conducted. In the present year, however, in consequence of reinforcements having arrived from Europe, which enabled the government to act with vigour, the contest assumed a more favourable appearance than it had borne during several preceding campaigns. The troops moved in three columns, and attacked the insurgents at different points. A series of engagements followed, which were not decisive in their character, but which generally terminated in favour of the Dutch, and enabled them to hem their adversaries more closely in.

On

the 2nd of May an attack was made upon Pengasse, where the rebels had stationed themselves to the number of six or seven hundred men. They waited the approach of the Dutch troops with firmness, and made a vigorous resistance, but gave way and fled, when the Dutch charged with the bayonet. Another body of them was routed, about the same time, near Sepoerang, where they lost two hundred men, with all their horses and arms. The result of these operations was, that Diepo Negoro, the insurgent leader, found himself confined within a narrow district, which supplied scarcely enough of land to raise rice for his followers. He still continued, however, to keep his men together; and, while he prudently avoided any regular action in the open field, he made sudden attacks where they were least expected, and cut off small detachments which might happen to be separated from the main body.

In a former volume* we have given an account of the foolish

• Vol. LXIX. p. 288.

quarrel in which the duke of Brunswick had thought fit to involve himself with the king of Hanover, who, as his guardian, had conducted, during his minority, the administration of his states. The duke had complained of various proceedings of the king of Hanover in that capacity; he had complained still more loudly of count Munster, who, as Hanoverian minister, had borne the principal share in these affairs, and had condescended to challenge the count to fight a duel. Above all, he had refused to recognize certain liberal alterations in the political constitution of Brunswick, which had been introduced by his royal guardian. He complained loudly, too, that the Hanoverian government had protected, and still refused to deliver up, a certain privy councillor, Schmidt Phiseldek, with whom the duke had a quarrel, and whom he wished, therefore, to punish. The king of Hanover applied to the Diet to compel the duke to make satisfaction for the insults which he had publicly heaped upon his majesty; and the states of the duchy addressed themselves to the Diet, to be maintained in the possession of that better constitution, and those greater and more useful powers, which they had obtained from the hand of the king of Hanover, the legal representative of their prince. The duke was willing to recognize the states in their old and inefficient form, with all its accompaniments of patrimonial jurisdictions, exemption from taxes, and other franchises of the privileged classes, every one of which had been abolished, when the new constitution was introduced. The states refused to except of this ruinous boon, and insisted on the preservation of what had been already so solemnly and beneficially established. They founded their demand on the thirteenth article of the Act of the Confederation, which, as they thought, required, that a formal and actual representation of the people, like that in England and France, should be introduced into all the German states, and which had been already carried into effect, in this sense, in Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse, and Weimar. It was just because the old constitution, though otherwise good, and one with which the people had been happy under their dukes, was not founded on popular representation, that it had been changed during the duke's minority. The duke would neither satisfy his subjects, nor apologize to the king of Hanover. He maintained that neither his guardian, nor any other power, was entitled to alter or interfere with the constitution of his states, and that he had said and printed of the king of Hanover nothing which his majesty did not deserve. The Courts of Vienna and Berlin interposed their mediation, to prevent the necessity of the Diet pronouncing a formal and public sentence; but the duke would listen to no mediation or reinonstrance; and the Diet gave forth a decree, deciding every part of the cause against him.. Having set forth the errors of the duke-that he had obstinately refused to listen to reason, or to the wise and benevolent admonitions of friendly courts, and that his whole conduct had made it imperative upon the Federation, if it would not overlook one of the most important purposes

a

of its constitution, to put an end, promptly and decisively, to these aberrations, the Germanic body decided as follows:* His serene highness the duke of Brunswick is in fault, and is bound, within a term of four weeks, publicly to withdraw the patent of the 10th May, 1827, and to make an appropriate written apology for his conduct, by the medium of special envoy. Secondly, in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of the challenge of the Hanoverian Cabinet minister, count Munster, by the Brunswick officer, M. Praun, his serene highness the duke of Brunswick will subject the said M. Praun to the necessary examination, and will cause him to be punished according to the laws of his state. Thirdly, the proposition for the delivery of the privy councillor Schmidt Phiseldek, resting upon the treaty of the 16th of November, 1535, and that of the 8th of January, 1798, is wholly inadmissible. Fourthly, and Fifthly, the complaints of Brunswick against Hanover, on account of the prolongation of the minority in the time of the supposed majority of his serene highness, upon the part of his majesty the king, as regent of the duchy during the minority, and on account of the introduction of the new regulations of the 25th of April, 1820, into the duchy of Brunswick, by his royal Hanoverian majesty's government, as regent during the minority, are both alike inadmissible, there being no legal ground for the interference of the Federation. Sixthly, as his majesty the king of Hanover, in the state paper of the royal

• See Chronicle, p. 127.

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