occasions, on which it may be the duty of the Government to resist the production of papers, and when it would be inexpedient for the House to press for such production; but in those cases, the Government should stand upon its denial, and refuse information absolutely and entirely; but when the time has arrived, at which the Government think, that information may be communicated to Parliament, without detriment to the public service, surely it is incumbent upon them to give such papers as shall really elucidate the transactions to which they relate, and shall afford such complete explanations, as may enable Parliament to arrive at a sound and correct judgment upon the course which has been pursued but to give imperfect information, mutilated extracts, and fragments of correspondence, from which the most important parts have been cut off, is to make a mockery of Parliament, under pretence of submitting to its jurisdiction. That this has been done with respect to the affairs of Portugal, it will not be difficult to shew. For several years past, we have been engaged, actively and incessantly, in interference in the affairs, internal and external, of Portugal; we have carried on important correspondence on those affairs, with many of the great powers of Christendom; we have been parties to solemn transactions, deeply affecting the welfare and destiny of Portugal; we have lately, even undertaken the task of attempting to reconcile the conflicting rights and pretensions of the Princes of the House of Braganza, and of settling the order of succession to the throne of Portugal: but in all these negotiations and transactions, is it Portugal alone that has been concerned? Is it Portugal alone, whose interests have been involved, and whose honour has been staked upon the issue? England, also, is seriously affected by these transactions; in her interests far less indeed than Portugal, because with Portugal it was a question almost of life and death, with England only a balance of profit and loss; but in honour, we played by far the deepest game; for it was ours to arbitrate, hers only to suffer: she lay prostrate and powerless with the dagger at her throat, and it depended upon the turn of our hand, whether she should be sacrificed or saved; and when the mighty intermeddle with the destiny of the weak, and make themselves the arbiters of fate, it behoves them to render a clear account, and to shew

that they have neither done injustice. themselves, nor connived at, nor encouraged it in others. It is, then, a matter of deep interest and high importance, that we should know what have been the principles upon which our Government have acted; what has been the spirit in which the influence of England has been exerted; what objects have been aimed at; and by what means we have sought to attain them. A revolution has been effected, and an usurpation accomplished, almost in the presence of a British force; solemn engagements, to which we were parties, have been broken; gross indignity, by the admission of the Ministers themselves, has been offered to our King; Europe has been strewed with victims ruined by their confidence in us;-negotiations on all these matters have been undertaken, and have ended in acknowledged nothing; England, or at least its Government, is loaded with the reproaches of Europe: we hear

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-On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn."-

But upon all these affairs, so deeply affecting our interests, so nearly touching our honour-we have been kept in pro found ignorance; and the Government have preserved a gloomy silence, broken only partially, by a few oracular and mysterious sentences in Speeches from the Throne, and by the imperfect and unsatisfactory papers, which were extracted last Session from the pigeon-holes of the Foreign Office, by the motion of my right hon. friend, the Member for Knaresborough. When I am criticising, let me however be just. The fault of this silence does not rest solely with the Government : this House must also come in for its share. It was not to be expected that the Government should volunteer the production of papers, on a subject which it was so much their interest to keep, as far as possible, out of sight, and out of mind. No man is bound to criminate himself; and no man can be expected of his own accord to stir up a discussion, which he has too much reason to fear, must end in his own condemnation. It is no wonder, then, that this silence should have been preserved, so long as Parliament acquiesced in it; but therefore it is, that I intreat the House to take this matter in hand, and to require the production of that information, which it is so fitting and necessary

have reached the Brazils, sent from England after the death of Don John was known in London. It will be seen, therefore, that in point of fact, it was absolutely impossible that the English Government could have had any thing to do with this grant, and that it must have been the spontaneous act of Don Pedro himself; an act, however, not arising from levity or caprice, but suggested by the use of his own experience, and by a prudent attention to the signs of the times. I am speaking now, not of the details of this Constitution, which might or might not have been better adapted to the existing state of parties and interests in Portugal, but of its character as a free institution, and as contrasted with pure and absolute monarchy. I look upon that Constitution as having arisen out of the events, which had happened in the world, during the preceding twelve years. When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph; and the events of that period furnish an additional proof

Invariably been directed to assist and confirm the usurpation of Don Miguel: I maintain, that the solemn engagements taken by Don Miguel, and to which he chose to make the King of England a party, gave us rights of interference with respect to him, which we should not otherwise have had; that a due regard to the dignity and good faith of the nation, and to the personal honour of its Sovereign, required us to enforce those rights; and I further maintain, that so far from incurring any danger of war by so doing, we might have accomplished our purpose, without any war at all; whereas the course which has been pursued has brought us to a situation, in which the Ministers themselves confess, they are not free from apprehensions as to the continuance of peace. It has been a disputed question, whether the Government of England were counsellors beforehand to the Portuguese Constitution; be this as it may, there can be no doubt, that by circumstances, over which that Government had no control, the name of England was so much mixed up with the introduction and establishment of that Constitution, that public opinion in Portugal, linked together that Constitution and English connexion, in such a manner, that no official disclaimers could effectually destroy the impression. As to the question itself, however, my firm conviction is, that the English Government had nothing whatever to do with the granting of the Portuguese Constitution. I say not this, as a vindication from an imputation, but as the statement of a truth. I confess, that if the English Government had advised the Emperor Don Pedro, to bestow free institutions on his Portuguese subjects, as a parting gift, upon abdicating the throne, I think they would have done a wise and praiseworthy act; and one, which, so far from denying, they might justly have been proud of; but if we will only solve this question by chronology, and pay the slightest attention to dates, we shall see that it was physically impossible they could. King John died at Lisbon on the 10th of March, 1826. The news of his death reached Rio de Janeiro about the 26th of April, and it appears, from the papers before Parliament, that within a few days afterwards, Don Pedro had determined upon giving a Constitution to Portugal; by which time it was impossible that any communication could

Height will recall high thoughts, how soon unsay What feigned submission swore; how ease recant Vows made in pain, as violent as void." The rulers of mankind, like the Persian fisherman, had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the

galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance. We all re member that succession of revolutions, which in Portugal marked the struggle for ascendancy between two parties, who fought, the one for the maintenance of abuses by which they lived, under the protection of arbitrary power; the other for the suppression of those abuses, and for security under a constitutional system. In 1820, a revolution established in Portugal the Spanish Constitution of 1812; a crude ill-digested system, unfit for any country, but especially for one just emerging from arbitrary government; but which the Portuguese probably laid hold of, as the first thing that came ready to their hand, and for want of time and capacity to frame any thing better. In 1821 King John returned to Portugal from the Brazils, where he had been since 1807, driven from thence by a revolution, which had broken out there in the beginning of that year; and on his landing at Lisbon he swore allegiance to the new constitution. In 1823 a military revolution, headed by Don Miguel, overthrew the constitution; the insurrection was repressed, and Don Miguel banished, and the popular party again began to shew themselves; and in 1824 Don John, for the purpose of appeasing parties, and gaining time, published an evasive decree, proclaiming that the ancient constitution of Portugal, consisting of three estates, was still in actual vigour. From that time till the death of Don John in 1826, the two parties remained in a state of balanced truce, each of them waiting for events. In the mean time the revolution which had broken out in the Brazils in 1821, had led, by a succession of events, to the separation of the two countries, to the erection of the Brazils into an Independent Empire under Don Pedro, and to the establishment of the representative system of Government, granted by him in 1823. Was it then surprising, that, when in 1826, Don Pedro heard of the death of his father Don John, and found that by this event, and by the separation of the Crowns of Brazil and Portugal, the latter would devolve upon his infant daughter, Donna Maria, he should have thought that the best chance of saving Portugal from fur

ther convulsions, and of securing an undisturbed succession to his daughter, lay in establishing in Portugal, not the wild and democratic and impracticable constitution of 1820, but that mixed and modified system of Representative Government, which had produced in the Brazils so much tranquillity and satisfaction. It was this consideration beyond a doubt, and not any advice from England, that led Don Pedro to send to Lisbon, what was nearly a transcript of the Constitution of the Brazils. But the papers now before us prove, that although we were no parties to the original determination, yet those who saw only the outside of things must have considered us, as mixed up with its execution. The Constitution, as is shewn by these papers, was brought over by an Englishman; accidentally and unforeseen, but still so it was. Its adoption in Portugal was brought about by the direct and active interference of an Englishman; acting in his capacity of Portuguese Plenipotentiary I allow, but still it was the interference, active and direct, of an Englishman. England was asked what Portugal should do; and the advice of the English Cabinet, in which, never let it be forgotten, the leading Members of the present Government had seats, the advice of the English Cabinet was, immediate acceptance of the Charter. This was not indeed given as peremptory advice, but submitted as an element of decision, but still such was the public and official advice of the English Cabinet. I know well that the distinction between an English Minister, and a Portuguese Plenipotentiary is not merely technical, but substantial; I know well that there is a real difference, between giving peremptory advice, and submitting advice as an element of decision; but these differences and distinctions were of a nature to escape general observation, and were capable of being easily explained away, by those who had an interest to do so; and we were, therefore, in this respect, clearly in the situation of persons, who are fettered by having excited in others expectations beyond what they themselves fully intended; and who will be judged, not by intentions known only to themselves, but by the interpretation which others may have put upon their conduct. On this first branch of the subject I ask for no other papers; those which we have, though scanty in quantity, are abundantly ample in substance; every