penetrates the intentions of men, and according to them determines their elevation? He who sincerely wishes the welfare of his fellows serves God, and omnipotent goodness protects him. We desire that, in conformity with these dispositions, you direct the prayers of the faithful whom Providence has entrusted to you. Ask of God, that his spirit of peace and wisdom may descend upon us, that the voice of passion may be stifled in meditating upon such sentiments as ought to animate us, and which the general interests of this monarchy inspire: that religion, tranquillity, and happiness may succeed to the discords to which we are now exposed. Let us return thanks to God for the success which he has been pleased to grant to the arms of our august brother and powerful ally the Emperor of the French, who has had no other end in supporting our rights by his power than to procure to Spain a long peace, founded on her independence.” A heavy load of national guilt lay upon the nations of the Peninsula; and those persons, who, with well-founded faith, could see and understand that the moral government of the world is neither less perfect, nor less certain in its course, than that material order which science has demonstrated, ... they perceived in this dreadful visitation the work of retribution. The bloody conquests of the Portugueze in India were yet unexpiated; the Spaniards had to atone for extirpated nations in Cuba and Hayti, and their other islands, and on the continent of America for cruelties and excesses not less atrocious than those which they were appointed to punish. Vengeance had not been exacted for the enormities perpetrated in the Netherlands, nor for that accursed tribunal which, during more than two centuries, triumphed both in Spain and Portugal, to the ineffaceable and eternal infamy of the Romish church. But the crimes of a nation, like the vices of an individual, bring on their punishment in necessary consequence, ... so righteously have all things been ordained. From the spoils of India and America the two governments drew treasures which rendered them independent of the people for supplies; and the war which their priesthood waged against knowledge and reformation succeeded in shutting them out from these devoted countries. A double despotism, of the throne and of the altar, was thus established, and the result was a state of degradation, which nothing less than the overthrow of both, by some moral and political earthquake, loosening the very foundations of society, could remove. Such a convulsion had taken place, and the sins of the fathers were visited upon the ♦CONDITION OF MADRID.♦ children. Madrid, the seat of Philip II., “that sad intelligencing tyrant,” who from thence, as our great Milton said, “mischieved the world with his mines of Ophir,” that city which once aspired to be the mistress of the world, and had actually tyrannized over so large a part of it, was now itself in thraldom.