in the reign of Louis XVIII., more disturbances and insurrections have arisen from the absolutists, eager to push the Government on to greater violence and intolerance, than from the persecuted friends of the Constitution. At the present time, it can hardly be affirmed that any liberal party exists among the Spaniards. The sword, the scaffold, exile, the dungeon, have done their work upon the unhappy Constitutionalists, until few remain upon their native soil, bold enough to move in any scheme of reform or liberty. Their bravest and best have perished, or now waste their energies in the obscure sufferings of protracted banishment, in the heartsickness of hope deferred; and what can be hoped from the disheartened and persecuted men, who have just escaped the worst punishment of unsuccessful rebellion? In Spain, therefore, there is no question except between more or less liberal members of the absolutist party, and it is to the former rather than the latter division that the wishes of the King are believed to lean, while Don Carlos favors the apostolical or ultra section of the enemies of free institutions. Ofcourse, that portion of the Spanish nation, which deprecates the blind violence of the apostolicals, looks to the continuance of the sceptre, in the hands of Ferdinand as preferable to its transfer to Carlos, and has anxiously desired the birth of a Prince of the Asturias to give succession to the elder line. In addition to these circumstances, so much calculated to attach interest to the arrival of

Maria Cristina in Spain, it is to be observed that her parents, the King and Queen of the Two Sicilies, the latter herself an Infanta of Spain, were to accompany the new Queen to Madrid. They came from Naples by the South of France, and crossing the Pyrenees proceeded through Barcelona and Valencia to Madrid. Catalonia was ruled at this time with a rod of iron by the Conde de España, Captain General of the province, and one of the sternest agents of absolutism in Spain. The numerous individuals in Barcelona, who suffered on account of opinions, crowded around the path of the young Queen, to swell her welcome with their acclamations, promising themselves her aid in making their peace with the king. Similar gratulation attended her in other parts of her progress onwards, and on her arrival in the court of Madrid itself, - her entire journey being one long uninterrupted ovation. The impurificados continued to the last to hope and expect the most agreeable results from the marriage, although without any very specific grounds of encouragement.

The Queen reached Aranjuez on the 8th of December. She was received there by the Infantes, Don Carlos and Don Francisco, the former of whom had authority to enter into the contract of marriage as proxy for the King. On the 11th she entered Madrid, amid all the rejoicings so peculiar to the Spanish people. The King and Queen of Naples and their daughter were attended by a brilliant cortège of the public authorities and troops from the

gate of Atocha, by which they entered Madrid, to the Palace at the other extremity of the city. Ferdinand and his two brothers rode on horseback by the side of the coach which contained the young Queen, with the manolos of Madrid dancing the fantastic mogiganga before them through the principal streets, every house being ornamented with brilliant hangings suspended from the balconies, and every avenue and window full of the multitudes of admiring spectators. The contract of marriage was subscribed by the royal parties in person that evening, and the next day the religious ceremony of the velacion was solemnized in the convent of Atocha. Splendid illuminations, with bull fights and theatrical representations prepared for the occasion, completed the rejoicings of the inhabitants of Madrid.

Meanwhile no act of amnesty made its appearance. The Duque de Frias and some other principal grandees, who had been living under a kind of general distrust on account of their liberal opinions, embraced this occasion to offer their congratulations, and to propitiate the good will of the King It was whispered that Ferdinand himself proposed that the healing measure, which the popular sentiment called for, should be frankly accorded. He countenanced the public expectations by some unequivocal acts emanating from himself. Thus he invited the venerable and amiable Don Manuel Josef Quintana, who, like every other ardent friend of letters, had favored the cause of the Constitution and had been

since frowned upon by the Court, to write an epithalamium, and liberally recompensed the poet for his performance. But the representations of Senor Calomarde, the Minister of Grace and Justice and all powerful delegate of the apostolical party in the Cabinet, overcame the better intentions of the King, and prevented his recovering the forfeited title of amado Fernando, which the war of independence had consecrated. Only a few scanty favors were dealt out to individuals, who like the Conde de Cartagena, Don Pablo Morillo, bore the stigma of royal reprobation after having served their country but too faithfully and zealously.

The King and Queen of Naples continued in Spain during part of the winter of 1829 and 1830, partaking of the festivities of the court of Madrid, after which they returned home again by the way of France. If the treasure expended in this costly royal progress had heen appropriated towards the payment of certain of the just debts of Naples, which she has so long pleaded poverty as an excuse for not discharging, it would have spoken better for the justice and honesty of King Francis.

The promise of offspring by his Queen was hailed by Ferdinand with peculiar joy, in consideration of the long disappointment of his wishes in this respect. He took occasion from this circumstance to revive the ancient constitution of the Spanish monarchy in regard to succession. When Philip of Anjou became King of Spain, among other violent chang

es in the institutions of the country, he saw fit to introduce the Salic law of his own family, in derogation of the rules of descent which had elevated himself to the throne, and which had always obtained in the States of Castille. In anticipation of the possibility that the unborn infant might prove a daughter, and that no male offspring might be granted to his prayers, Ferdinand, in the plenitude of the legislative authority of absolutism, repealed the Salic law of Philip V. and restored the rules of succession of the Gothic and Austrian lines, which devolve the descent upon female, in default of male heirs. The result justified the forethought of the King, as the child proved to be a daughter, who now therefore has claims to the Crown adverse to those of Don Carlos.

We defer to another year the history of events in Portugal. They chiefly consist of the tyrannical vagaries of the usurper Miguel, who, although acknowledged during the year by Spain and the United States, did not obtain the countenance of the great pow

ers generally. Much speculation was occasioned abroad by the fact of the recognition of Don Miguel by the United States. These things depend so entirely in Europe upon selfish considerations of family, or artificial combinations to preserve the balance of power, or a blind submission of all other questions to the single one of legitimacy or constitutionalism, that no stable or consistent principle of recognition there prevails. Hence it is that Europeans are slow to comprehend the principle, which ies at the foundation of our foreign intercourse, of holding friendly relations with every other established government, without scrutinizing the casuistical points of right, which the government may put forward to justify its own existence. It is sufficient for us as a government, to know that the sceptre of Miguel is received by the Portuguese themselves. As men and Christians, we trust no European will exceed us in reprobation of his character and conduct, or in solicitude that better rulers and better days may be given for unhappy Portugal.

substituted a tyrannical Church of England. The Protestant reformation had so far prevailed among the people in the island of Great Britain, that the adherents to the Romish faith were there left in a small minority; but the combined rigor of Church and State weighed with equal severity upon large bodies of dissenters from the legal establishment: and in Ireland, where a great majority of the people had retained their allegiance to the Pope, and their devotion to the Catholic creeds, the British laws for the establishment of the Protestant faith and the maintenance of the Protestant succession, were engines not of freedom but of the most odious oppression.

During a long series of years there had been a succession of struggles by the sufferers under this tyranny, assisted by the more disinterested efforts of the friends of civil and religious liberty, to cast off this galling yoke, and to recover the natural right of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. The greatest of all the obstacles in their way was that the maintenance exclusively of the Church of England and of the Kirk of Scotland had been incorporated in the coronation oath of the British King. In the deeply conscientious mind of George the Third, the question of Catholic emancipation was not a question of political expediency, nor of toleration, nor of justice, but of fidelity to his oath. He did not permit himself to examine or investigate argument from any other consideration. He adhered inflexibly to what he had sworn- and how

ever erroneous we may deem the principle to be, which had thus made religious intolerance a fundamental law of the realm, we cannot withhold the tribute of respect from the motive of the scruple which never ceased to sway the determination of the King. At the time when the separate political existence of Ireland was merged in her union with Great Britain, when Mr Pitt, who had been nearly twenty years at the head of a successful administration, and had enjoyed during that long period the most unbounded royal favor, had pledged himself to obtain from Parliament the revocation of the Catholic disabilities, this impracticability of the King, not only disabled Mr Pitt from the performance of his engagement, but brought his administration itself to a sudden and unexpected close. Several years after, and subsequent to the decease of Mr Pitt, the same King had abruptly dismissed another administration for merely proposing to bring forward the project of Catholic emancipation in Parliament, and in the formation of a Ministry to supply their places had made it an express condition that they should never bring forward this obnoxious measure in Parliament, nor even make mention of it to him. His successor, George the Fourth, inherited the scruples of his father, but not his stubbornness of adherence to them. Until the last year of his life, he had resisted by all the influence that he possessed, the introduction and progress of any plan for admitting the Catholics to the equal enjoyment of civil and political rights. Even so late as