Thus had Buonaparte succeeded in dispossessing the Bourbon dynasty of the throne of Spain. Having, under pretence of a treaty, secured the passes of the Pyrenees, seized the three strong places upon the frontier, and the important city of Barcelona, marched his armies into the heart of the kingdom, and occupied the capital itself, he had now drawn the royal family within his reach, serpent-like, by the fascination of fear, and compelled them to sign the act of their abdication and disgrace. The train of perfidy whereby he had thus far accomplished his purpose is unexampled even in the worst ages of history. The whole transaction was a business of pure unmingled treachery, unprovoked, unextenuated, equally detestable in its motive, its means, and its end. The pretext that there existed an English party in Spain was notoriously false. Those Spaniards who felt and lamented the decline of their country had rested their hopes of its regeneration upon him. There was not any possible way by which he could so surely have confirmed the alliance between France and Spain, secured the affection of the Spanish people, and strengthened his own immediate individual interest (if the vulgarest ambition had not blinded him), as by connecting his own family with the royal house in marriage, in conformity with Ferdinand’s desire, and directing him and his ministers how to bring about those reforms which would restore to health and strength a country that was still sound at heart. No other mortal has ever in any crisis of the world had it in his power to produce such great and extensive good as this opportunity invited, without risk, effort, evil, or any contingent inconvenience. He had only to say, let these things be, and the work of progressive reformation would have begun in Spain and in the Spanish Indies, while he, like a presiding deity, might have looked on, and have received the blessings of both countries for his benignant influence. ♦CONDUCT OF MURAT TOWARDS THE JUNTA OF GOVERNMENT.♦