♦DEPUTATION OF PORTUGUEZE TO BAYONNE. APR. 22.♦ By another edict all gunpowder, artillery, fire-arms, and weapons of every kind, in the possession of merchants or other individuals, were ordered to be carried to the arsenal, and deposited there till the owner having obtained a licence for his ship to sail, should want to embark them. ♦OBS. PORT. P. 249.♦ As soon as they were delivered in, the best pieces of cannon were spiked and the musquets disabled. Such precautions were now become more needful for many reasons. May is the month in which[23] provisions are always dearest in Portugal; and at this time Buonaparte’s plots against Spain were drawing toward their completion, and the ferment which had arisen in that country extended to Portugal. The Spanish troops from Alemtejo were all removed to Lisbon, and so divided as to be completely within the power of the French; and to amuse the Portugueze people with hopes, reports were circulated that the contribution was remitted, and that the sequestered property would be restored. Halcyon days were now to succeed. ♦OBS. PORT. P. 262.♦ There was to be nothing but prosperity for Portugal. A deputation had been sent to Bayonne to offer the homage of their countrymen to Buonaparte. The persons appointed for this were either those who were thought dangerous in their own country, or useful in France. They were the Marquises of Penalva, Marialva, Valença, and Abrantes, father and son; the Counts of Sabugal and Arganil; Viscount de Barbacena, the Inquisitor-General, the Bishop of Coimbra, the Prior of Avis, D. Nuno Caetano Alves Pereira de Mello, D. Lourenço de Lima, Joaquim Alberto George, and Antonio Thomas da Silva Leitam. On the Prince’s birth-day, when the streets were strongly patroled lest that anniversary should call forth any expression of popular feeling, a letter from ♦LETTER FROM THE DEPUTATION.♦ this deputation was made public. It assured the Portugueze, that if any thing could equal the genius of the Emperor Napoleon, it was the elevation of his soul, and the generosity of his principles: that with a truly paternal affability he had manifested those principles in his use of the rights which circumstances gave him. His army had not entered Portugal as conquerors. He bore no enmity to their Prince, nor to the royal family; he sought only to connect them with the rest of Europe in the great continental system, of which they were to be the last and closing link, for he could not tolerate on the continent an English colony. It depended upon the Portugueze themselves to show, by their conduct in this respect, whether they were now worthy still to form a nation, or must be annexed to a neighbour, from whom so many causes tended to divide them. The Emperor knew and lamented the privations which, in common with the continent and America, Portugal endured during the temporary interruption of her commerce; but this was the consequence of a struggle, the result of which would amply compensate for them.