were to pass and repass, without obstruction, paying only the customary dues. No pilotage was to be demanded, unless the captain of the vessel should actually require a pilot, and vessels were no longer to be compelled to land their guns, or unship their rudders. The king engaged, that no obstruction should be given to mer chants coming and going at their pleasure, or disposing of, or taking away, their property as they might please; and that, in any case of wreck, or injury by stress of weather, the people of the towns and villages in the vicinity should yield all the assistance in their power. Rangoon, possession of which had been retained for the re-embarkation of the troops, was evacuated in November 1826; but his golden-footed majesty immediately found, that he had a new, though less formidable competitor for it on his hands. A neighbouring tribe of Taliens, or Talains, having at their head a native of the name of Gnu-lat, who, under the Burmese government, had been governor of Syriam, took advantage of the departure of the British, and speedily made themselves masters of the whole territory, with the exception of Rangoon itself, in which they shut up the Burmese garrison. The Golden Foot, how ever, immediately assembled an army, and giving them orders, as his manifesto expressed it, "to catch, murder, and squeeze the beggarly Taliens," he succeeded in clearing his territory of the intruders, in the course of the following February.

Great discontent was excited at Calcutta by a financial regulation of the company. To relieve the pressure, which the expenses of the Burmese war had brought upon

their funds, they imposed a stamp duty. All Calcutta was unanimous against the justice and expediency of the measure; they even questioned its legality, and counsel were heard for three days against the registration of the act. A petition against it, the signatures to which included all the principal mercantile houses, was presented to the council; but the council remained firm in its purpose. The inhabitants resolved to petition parliament against what seemed to be, in principle, the assertion of a right of unlimited taxation. They obtained leave of the Sheriff to meet for the purpose of considering the propriety of petitioning parliament but the council sent a severe reprimand to that officer, and commanded him to disallow the meeting. the meeting. Debarred from meeting in any corporate capacity, they resolved to meet as an assem bly of individuals; and that there might appear nothing clandestine in their proceedings, they gave public intimation of their intention. The government, which had "no objection" to the inhabitants petitioning the parliament of England, saw great objection to affording them the means of drawing up a petition, and sent an order to their stipendiary magistrates to disperse the meeting, and, if necessary, to call in a military force for this purpose. The magistrates, however, took legal advice on the legality of the act; and finding that each and every one of them would be liable to an action of trespass for disturbing a lawful meeting, they refused to obey the order. The meeting accordingly took place.

A petition to both Houses of parliament was unanimously voted, was shortly afterwards signed by

every man in Calcutta, of what ever party, eminent for wealth or station, out of the service of the company, and was transmitted to England.

The government of Calcutta had found it necessary or prudent to lay certain restrictions on the periodical press of that presidency. They passed a regulation prohibiting the publication of any newspaper, or other periodical work, by any person not licensed by the governor and council, and making such licence Ievocable at the pleasure of the governor and council: and the regulation had been registered by the supreme court. When it was transmitted, however, to Bombay, to be made law there, the supreme court of that presidency took a different view of the matter: two out of three judges refused to register it, as being contrary to law.

At the Cape of Good Hope, a new governor was installed in place of lord C. Somerset, whose conduct, whether right or wrong, had given rise to so many complaints. His lordship came home, professedly to

The reader will find the judgment delivered by the chief justice in the Appendix to the Chronicle.

meet the charges made against him; but they were allowed to die away in the House of Commons without any definite measure founded on them being even proposed.

The foreign relations of the country underwent no change, excepting towards Turkey; and the events which led to that change will find a more fitting place in another part of our narrative. A convention was signed with the princess Regent of Portugal for the maintenance of the British troops which had been sent to that country. The expense was ultimately to be borne by Portugal; but it was agreed that the money should, in the mean time, be advanced by Britain, "to obviate the difficulties which an immediate disbursement of funds might occasion, under the present circumstances, to the government of Portugal." A treaty for the abolition of the slave trade was concluded with the emperor of Brazil. The trade, on the part of the Brazilians was to cease in three years from the ratification of the treaty, and those who should carry it on after that period were to be treated as pirates.

Mexico.

WH

THEN France, in 1826, expressed her disapprobation of the conduct of Spain towards Portugal, by recalling her ambassador from the court, and her Swiss guards from around the person of his Most Catholic Majesty, she had only followed the dictates of sound policy, and displayed a sincere desire for the preservation of peace. But there was still a powerful party in France, who thought that the interests and honour of the empire lay in an opposite direction. They were the friends of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny in their own country; they hated, no less than did Ferdinand and his Camarilla, the probable progress of a different system on the banks of the Tagus. So far were they from thinking, that the insidious plottings, and open armaments of Spain against Portugal, could justly expose the former to be abandoned by France, that they considered it a duty, which France owed to legitimacy

and to Europe, to unite cordially with Spain, even at the expense of a war with England, in aiding the exertions of the Portuguese rebels. To the cause of Chaves, and his associated traitors, they devoted their talents, and their political influence; the columns of their public prints in Paris were the official, though lying, records of his marches and exploits. Their friends did not seem to have much weight in the French government, in so far as only ostensible offices were to be considered; but they possessed beside and behind the throne, in the closet and in the confessional, a power which threatened to counteract that of the ministry itself. They had already manifested this secret, but most effective, authority, in the conduct of their minion De Moustiers, the minister at the court of Madrid. Obedient to their commands, because confident that they were able to protect him against any substantial disgrace, that person had

violated the instructions of his sovereign, and given his countenance to Ferdinand, through all the windings of his Portuguese policy. Although his official superiors had found themselves compelled to disclaim his conduct by recalling him from his mission, even they were unable to prevent his concealed superiors from breaking his fall. De Moustiers on his return could scarcely complain of having lost the countenance of his master; he was received, and not coldly received, by his majesty, and continued his political activity in another sphere. The known existence, therefore, of this influence, caused many apprehensions to be entertained, that the true disposition of France might still be warlike, and gave double importance to the language which the king might use in addressing the chambers, which were to meet on the 14th of December.

The royal speech on that occasion, and still more the language with which it was followed up, in both chambers, by the French ministers, dissipated these fears. The king, referring to what had taken place between Spain and Portugal, expressed himself thus, "I receive from all foreign governments the assurance of the most amicable dispositions-dispositions which are entirely conformable to my own sentiments for the maintenance of peace. Disturbances have recently broken out in one part of the peninsula. I shall unite my efforts with those of my allies to put an end to them, and to prevent all their consequences." The explanations given, and the views propounded by ministers were much more frank and ample than the generalities of a king's speech, allowed to be put into the royal

mouth. They plainly accused Spain of unjustifiable aggression towards Portugal, as well as of disrespect towards France; and they justified the conduct of England in sending troops to Lisbon. They stated that, on the occupation of Spain by the French army in 1823, England had obtained from France a promise that no hostile attempt should be made against Portugal, and had declared herself bound to come to the assistance of that power, if it should be attacked. On the other hand, when the troubles broke out in Portugal in 1826, England had come under a similar obligation for the security of Spain, pledging herself to take care that no act of hostility should be committed on the part of Por tugal, provided Portugal was not assailed by Spain. England had been faithful to this engagement; but Spain had violated the compact by which she was bound, or by which, at least, if it should be violated by England or Portugal, the other powers of Europe were bound to interfere in her behalf. "At the very moment," said the foreign minister, Count de Damas, in the Chamber of Peers," at the very moment when the cabinet of Spain was giving assurances, that the arms taken from the Portuguese refugees should be given up to the Portuguese government; at the moment when orders were given that the refugees themselves should be removed from the frontiers, these men entered Portugal in arms; and this sudden attack was accompanied by circumstances which leave no doubt as to the cooperation of some of the Spanish authorities, who had been charged with the execution of the order to disarm and disperse the refugees among the interior provinces.

France, which had the greatest reason to prevent all hostilities on the part of Spain, which had the most right to be listened to, whose intervention should have inspired Portugal and England with the greatest security as to the fullment of the engagements of the Spanish cabinet-could not remain indifferent to events which displayed, in a manner so evident, either contempt for its counsels, or the impotence of its influence; and the king's government had immediately to testify its disapprobation by recalling its ambassador from Madrid. France does not contest with England the right resulting from its duty-the right imposed on it by a long series of treaties, to go to the aid of Portugal. It will continue its efforts to prevent the renewal of acts which have authorized the measures taken by the British Cabinet; it will omit nothing to prevent a rupture between Spain and Portugal, and it hopes to succeed; it has already taken, with regard to the Cabinet of Madrid, in concert with all its allies, steps the most likely to attain this object. It continues to receive from the British Cabinet the most positive assurances of its entire co-operation. Nothing which has taken place up to the latest events, authorizes the king's government to raise any doubts on the sincerity of these assurances: on their part, the ministers of the king are firmly determined to advise his majesty to refuse his support to the Spanish government, if, by its own fault, it puts Portugal under the necessity of assuming a hostile attitude towards it. -France cannot, then, be reduced

to

renounce the advantages of peace, except by circumstances which we are far from foreseeing.

Her good faith and her dignity would not permit her to support unjust and passionate acts, which have taken place only in contempt of counsels which have been given and promises which have been made."

But the justice, the moderation, the dignity, of these sentiments were far from securing the unanimous approbation of the chambers. The French ministers found that the events in Portugal had given to three very different classes of adversaries, different subjects of reproach. The ultra-royalists, in the first place, openly accused them of having abandoned their duty in deserting Ferdinand, and scarcely concealed their opinion that France ought to have given Spain cordial, active, and efficient, assistance in crushing the constitution of Portugal. That constitution itself, again, they represented as the creature of English influence, framed for the very purpose of securing that influence, and imported with the view of extending the same influence to Spain by keeping the threat of constitutional inoculation hanging over her in terrorem. The rage against England, to which these persons gave vent, was intemperate in the extreme, and was only equalled by their ludicrous ignorance of her policy and interests, or by their exaggerated misrepresentations of her motives. They taunted the ministry with having renounced the holy alliance, to patch up a treaty with England, and with having thus pusillanimously abandoned their own proper course, to follow schemes of English policy in the wake of the English cabinet. In their love of arbitrary institutions, they even were less regardful of national gratitude than was decent; and, for