1832.J [ 375 3 



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DON PEDRO AND HIS ADHERENTS. 



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" Tros vel Tyriusque Nullo mihi discriminc habetur." 

 



THE infamous career of Miguel is drawing fast, very fast, we trust, to a 

 close. Don Pedro is on the seas, and ere the expiration of another 

 moon the constitutional banner of the young Queen Maria da Gloria 

 may float in triumph, not in the language of Casimir Perrier beneath, 

 but above the walls of the capital of her ancestors. Were we to mea- 

 sure the probabilities of the success of the expedition by the rules of 

 the military art, we should be less sanguine in our expectations in a 

 military point of view, all the chances are on the side of Miguel. Don 

 Pedro's line of operation will extend from Terceira to the coast of 

 Portugal, subject to all the vicissitudes of a maritime expedition, and 

 the risk of a descent in a country in which he has not a single point 

 d'appui : but the question comes rather under the head of military poli- 

 tics than of strategies. Don Pedro will triumph rather by moral than 

 physical force. The first battalion sent to oppose his landing will join 

 his ranks ; this is an opinion we share with the ex-emperor himself, 

 who confidently expects to enter Lisbon almost without firing a shot. 



Every term of obloquy and reproach with which our own, and every 

 other European language abounds, have been vented on the head of 

 the present ruler of Portugal. It is not our intention to dispute the 

 justice of that sentence of universal execration so justly awarded against 

 him ; our object is rather to shew, by the following sketches, that Don 

 Pedro, and the leaders of his party, are just as unworthy of the gene- 

 rous sympathy of the British nation as the Infante Miguel himself. 



DON PEDRO D' ALCANTARA. 



The ex-Emperor Don Pedro, notwithstanding the bright corrusca- 

 tions of liberalism that have, from time to time, illumined his political 

 career, is considered by his warmest partizans rather a liberal fc par 

 ton" than et par sentiment" In fact, if, undazzled by the glittering halo 

 shed around him by the incense of flattery, we penetrate its specious 

 glare, we shall discover that the ruling passion of his mind is des- 

 potism ; while the whole tenor of his political life has been marked by 

 phases of a deeply dyed political duplicity, to which no parallel can be 

 found, even among the deeds of his more unpopular brother Miguel. 



When the constitutional system was adopted in Brazil in 1821, Don 

 Pedro, eager for popularity, and enamoured of novelty, declared him- 

 self the champion of freedom, and momentarily became the idol of the 

 people. But his popularity was short for it must be in the recollection 

 of every one acquainted with South American affairs, that scarcely 

 three months after this event, the Praca do Commercio, within the walls 

 of which were assembled the electors of the capital, for the purpose of 

 constitutionally petitioning the king, was suddenly surrounded by a 

 battalion of Cascadores, who commenced an indiscriminate slaughter of 

 the assembled multitude. This atrocious assassination, this open violation 

 of the constitutional rights of the people, was the work of the liberal 



