with the pusillanimous conduct of their rulers, and confounded by the strangeness of the scene, evinced no desire to impede the march of events. Thus three weak battalions sufficed to impose a foreign yoke upon this great capital, and illustrated the truth of Napoleon’s maxim:--_that in war the moral is to the physical force as three parts to one_. The prince regent, after having at the desire of the French government, expelled the British factory, ordered the British minister plenipotentiary away from his court, sequestered British property, and shut the ports of Portugal against British merchants; after having degraded himself and his nation by performing every submissive act which France could devise to insult his weakness, was still reluctant to forego the base tenure by which he hoped to hold his crown. Alternately swayed by fear and indolence, a miserable example of helpless folly, he lingered until the reception of a Moniteur, announcing that “_the house of Braganza had ceased to reign_,” awoke all the energy he was capable of. At that time lord Strangford, the British minister plenipotentiary, had resigned all hope of persuading the royal family to emigrate; but sir Sydney Smith, seizing the favourable moment, threatened to commence hostilities if the emigration should be longer delayed; and thus urged, the prince regent of Portugal, the old queen his mother, and the rest of the royal family, had embarked on the 27th; and quitting the Tagus on the 29th of November[9], sailed for the Brazils, a few hours only before Junot arrived with his slight escort of grenadiers. This celebrated emigration was beneficial to the Brazils in the highest degree, and of vast importance to England in two ways, for it ensured great commercial advantages, and it threw Portugal completely into her power in the approaching conflict; but it was disgraceful to the prince, insulting to the brave people he abandoned, and impolitic, inasmuch as it obliged men to inquire how far subjects were bound to a monarch who deserted them in their need? how far the nation could belong to a man who did not belong to the nation? It has been observed by political economists, that where a gold and paper currency circulate together, if the paper be depreciated it will drag down the gold with it, and deteriorate the whole mass; but that after a time, the metal revolts from this unnatural state, and asserts its own intrinsic superiority. So a privileged class, corrupted by power and luxury, drags down the national character; but there is a point when the people, like the gold, no longer suffering such a degradation, will separate themselves with violence from the vices of their effeminate rulers. Before that time arrives a nation may appear to be sunk in hopeless lethargy, when it is really capable of great and noble exertions. Thus it was with the Portuguese, who were at this time unjustly despised by enemies, and mistrusted by friends. [Sidenote: Thiebault.] [Sidenote: Foy.]