235 Movements in Portugal. [MARCH, 



the bayonets of foreigners, contending upon their floors for mastery every 

 trait of peculiarly national character would be born as it were anew with 

 fresh youth and vigour in their hearts. The land of our forefathers ! 

 their faith ! their institutions and more than all, their follies would he 

 hallowed! Our country is delivered we are free! Can we be free, if, 

 in our very madness, we are not '* Portuguese'* again ? To be French 

 (even in taste) would be to be embowellcd. To be English little better 

 than to be a traitor. Though the strangers had left the secret of making 

 gold behind them, we may doubt almost if any citizen would have " filed 

 his mind" to use it. 



These are feelings which would infallibly arise ; but they would not 

 last. Nothing could he more certain than that they would have their course, 

 and cease ; that they would endure, in spite of all reason, for a specific 

 time, at the end of which no exertion could maintain them any longer. 

 In the beginning, all that had been done by the strangers, would be 

 detestable. By degrees some persors would perceive the advantage of 

 copying, or adopting, a great deal of it. In a little more, as affairs 

 developed themselves, new rights, as well as new knowledge, would be 

 found to have grown up under the provisional regime, which would be 

 destroyed by an unqualified return to the old one. And thus two political 

 parties would be regularly established in the state ; each of which felt its 

 interests or safety, compromised by the ascendancy and perhaps by the 

 very existence of the other. 



To imagine therefore that we should find all Portugal devoted to the 

 cause of the '* Constitution" was perfectly absurd ; a very large proportion 

 perhaps a numerical majority of the population of the country, would 

 beyond doubt be capable of being arrayed against it. The Church, shorn 

 as it was of its beams, was still incomparably the most powerful party in 

 the state, and was, for very life, opposed to any departure from the ancient 

 system. Popery would feel that Intelligence, in any shape, pointed surely 

 to its downfall. Of the higher nobility, some would take one side, and some 

 the other. The brains of some would get the better of their avarice and 

 their pride ; and they would tremble at the rottenness the insecurity 

 the imbecility the approved incapacity for a single hour to protect their 

 own persons or possessions which had been fatal to the old government. 

 Others, on the contrary, would be blinded by bigotry and insolence; 

 and others would be doubtful; for it requires an effort by those who parti- 

 cipate in despotic power although they see the evil of its abuse to con- 

 sent to its reduction. For the peasantry, they were destitute of the merest 

 elements of education; ignorant of what would be meant by, far less con- 

 stitute, a " political right ;" taught from their infancy to look for, listen 

 to, abide by, and revere, no guidance or opinion but the declaration of 

 their landlords, and their clergy ; it needed but a cry, that " the church 

 was in danger!" and these men were sure to declare for any object which 

 their habitual directors might think fit. The constitutional party, on the 

 other hand, would embrace almost all the people of the middle ranks the 

 people engaged in commerce, and the members of professions those persons 

 who, in every country, being the most engaged in the real business of life, 

 are always found the most clear-sighted in discovering their real interests. 

 People of this class have not much affection for a despotic government; for 

 it may oppress them, arid they hold no share in it. In spite of superstition, a 

 rapacious church is suspicious and unpleasing to them ; for they estimate the 

 value of the money taken from them by the exertion with which they acquire 

 it. Besides these, the cause of reform would have some advocates in the army ; 



