the daughter for her starving parents. Such was the state to which one of the most flourishing cities in Europe was reduced! ♦APRIL.♦ As the general distress increased, tyranny became more rigorous, and rapine more impatient. Many of the convents could not pay the sum at which they had been assessed, their resources having suffered in the common calamity; their rents were consequently sequestered, and the intrusive government began to take measures for selling off their lands to discharge the contribution. The rents of inhabited houses were sequestered, to answer for the assessment upon untenanted ones belonging to the same owner. At the beginning of April a prorogation of two months, for the payment of the last third of the impost, was promised to those who should have paid the first by the end of the month; ♦OBSERVADOR PORTUGUEZ, P. 123.♦ on the 28th eight days grace was proclaimed for the payment of the first third; after which rigorous distress was to be levied upon the defaulters, not for the first payment alone, but for the whole contribution; ♦IBID. P. 174.♦ and this threat was enforced. Suicide, which had scarcely ever been heard of in Portugal, became now almost a daily act. There is no inhumanity like that of avarice. The Royal Hospital at Lisbon was one of the noblest institutions in the world. Under the house of Braganza it was the admiration of all who knew how munificently it was supported, and how admirably conducted: under the usurpation of the French more than a third part of the patients who died there perished for want of food. Meantime the French government, affecting to compassionate the misery which it had created, made an ostentatious display of relieving the poor, and issued billets of two francs each, ♦IBID. P. 200.♦ in Portugueze money 320 _reis_; four hundred of which were distributed weekly among forty parishes, and five more added afterwards for a parish which had been overlooked. This measure was none of that charity which vaunteth not itself. The billets were given only at one place; crowds flocked thither in expectation; and the amount of this eleemosynary expense was loudly boasted and exaggerated by the French and their partizans, ... the whole sum thus expended scarcely exceeding 40_l._ per week. After a few weeks the billets were not regularly paid, and at length they became worthless: and this was the extent of the liberality of this execrable government in a city where they reckoned their plunder by millions! ♦NEVES, II 157.♦ To complete the miseries of this devoted country anarchy alone was wanting; and it soon necessarily resulted from the barbarous system of the French wherever the immediate pressure of their authority was not felt. ♦EVORA NO SEU ABATIMENTO GLORIOSAMENTE EXALTADA, P. 5.♦ After the disbandment of the Portugueze army, troops of banditti were formed, who robbed in companies with perfect impunity. The edict which prohibited all persons