Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
the higher orders of Portuguese are steadfast in their aversion
to the government of the "Liberals," and in their adherence to him
whom they still, after his seventeen years' dethronement, persist in
calling their king, and whom they have supported, during his long
exile, by their willing contributions. It is fresh in every one's
memory that, only the other day, twenty five peers, or successors
of peers, who had been excluded by Don Pedro from the peerage for
having sworn allegiance to his brother, having been reinstated and
invited to take their seats in the Chamber, signed and published
a document utterly rejecting the boon. Some hundreds of officers
of the old army of Don Miguel, who are living for the most part
in penury and privation, were invited to demand from Saldanha the
restitution of their grades, which would have entitled them to
the corresponding pay. To a man they refused, and protested their
devotion to their former sovereign. A new law of elections, with a
very extended franchise--nearly amounting, it is said, to universal
suffrage--having been the other day arbitrarily decreed by the
Saldanha cabinet (certainly a most unconstitutional proceeding,)
and the government having expressed a wish that all parties in the
kingdom should exercise the electoral right, and give their votes
for representatives in the new parliament, a numerous and highly
respectable meeting of the Miguelites was convened at Lisbon.
This meeting voted, with but two dissentient voices, a resolution
of abstaining from all share in the elections, declaring their
determination not to sanction, by coming forward either as voters
or candidates, a system and an order of things which they utterly
repudiated as illegal, oppressive, and forced upon the nation by
foreign interference. The same resolution was adopted by large
assemblages in every province of the kingdom. At various periods,
during the last seventeen years, the Portuguese government has
endeavoured to inveigle the Miguelites into the representative
assembly, doubtless hoping that upon its benches they would be
more accessible to seduction, or easier to intimidate. It is a
remarkable and significant circumstance, that only in one instance
(in the year 1842) have their efforts been successful, and that
the person who was then induced so to deviate from the policy of
his party, speedily gave unmistakable signs of shame and regret.
Bearing in mind the undoubted and easily proved fact that the
Miguelites, whether their numerical strength be or be not as great
as they assert, comprise a large majority of the clergy, of the old
nobility, and of the most highly educated classes of the nation,
their steady and consistent refusal to sanction the present order of
things, by their presence in its legislative assembly, shows a unity
of purpose and action, and a staunch and dogged conviction, which
cannot but be disquieting to their adversaries, and over which it is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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