174 NARRATIVE. 



who am so accustomed to decipher his memoranda, can derive but 

 httle assistance from them : therefore, that I may not injure a 

 reputation which stood so fair with the learned and the good, 

 I must request my readers to consider me as responsible for every 

 error. 



We did not quit Madeira, till we had witnessed the deposition 

 of the Constitutional Governor, and the arrival of the Marquis de 

 Portogallo in his place ". Notwithstanding many important affairs 

 of my own to attend to, and the few charms that politics possess 

 for a female, I could not but be struck, when in Lisbon, with the 

 unfitness of the people to receive the blessing for which they had 

 contended. The reception given to the new Governor was a 

 second proof, that these poor people were then unable to appre- 

 ciate the liberty which secured them to their families, and gave 

 them a right to think and act for themselves. The peasantry of 

 Madeira, always influenced by their priests, had been taught by 

 them to consider the constitution as an offence against the Divine 

 will, and therefore gladly returned to bondage and the Inqui- 

 sition. Reports (originating in a barber, I beheve) had been 

 transmitted to Lisbon, that the city of Funchal was in open 

 rebellion against the new order of things, and about to declare 

 itself, either for the Emperor of the Brazils, or totally indepen- 

 dent ; accordingly, troops and artillery were sent to quell the 

 supposed warfare, and unlimited commissions, and a gallows, 

 given to three judges, to condemn and punish as they pleased. 

 However, to the great astonishment of the royal party, all 

 Madeira hailed the new arrivals with demonstrations of pleasure. 

 The lower classes were riotous only in rejoicing ; the ecclesiastics 



" As this narrative was written during my last voyage from Africa, I could not he 

 aware of the several changes that have taken place in the Portuguese Government, 

 since the period of our departure from Madeira, but I do not erase these observations, 

 as they characterize the revolution of 1823. 



