The Spanish cloak, which was the universal dress of all ranks, was prohibited in the metropolis of Spain, and no Spaniard was allowed to walk abroad in the evening, unless he carried a light. All communication between the capital and the southern provinces, the most fertile and wealthiest of the kingdom, was cut off. Of the trading part of the community, therefore, those who were connected with the great commercial cities of the south coast were at once ruined, and they whose dealings lay with the provinces which were the seat of war were hardly more fortunate. The public creditors experienced that breach of public faith which always results from a violent revolution. The intrusive government acknowledged the debt, and gave notice of its intention to pay them by bills upon Spanish America: for this there was a double motive, the shame of confessing that the Intruder was unable to discharge the obligations of the government to whose rights and duties he affected to succeed, and the hope of interesting the holders of these bills in his cause: but so little possibility was there of his becoming master of the Indies, that the mention of such bills only provoked contempt. While commercial and funded property was thus destroyed, landed property was of as little immediate value to its owner. No remittances could be made to the capital from that part of Spain which was not yet overrun; and the devastations had been so extensive every where as to leave the tenant little means of paying the proprietor. These were the first-fruits of that prosperity which the Buonapartes promised to the Spaniards, ... these were the blessings which Joseph brought with him to Madrid! He, meantime, was affecting to participate in rejoicings, and receiving the incense of adulation, in that city where the middle classes were reduced to poverty by his usurpation, and where the wives whom he had widowed, and the mothers whom he had made childless, mingled with their prayers for the dead, supplications for vengeance upon him as the author of their miseries. The theatre was fitted up to receive him, the boxes were lined with silk, the municipality attended him to his seat, he was presented with a congratulatory poem upon his entrance, and the stage curtain represented the ♦1809. FEBRUARY.♦ Genius of Peace with an olive-branch in his left hand, and a torch in his right, setting fire to the attributes of war. Underneath was written, ♦FEB. 18.♦ “Live happy, Sire! reign and pardon!” At the very time when this precious specimen of French taste complimented the Intruder upon his clemency, an extraordinary criminal Junta was formed, even the military tribunals not being found sufficiently extensive in their powers for the work of extermination which was begun. It was “for trial of assassins, robbers, recruiters in favour of the insurgents, those who maintained correspondence with them, and who spread false reports.” Persons