While Europe was attending to the scenes of blood exhibited by most of its formidable powers, its attention was called off by an event very foreign to those struggles. An attempt of assassination was made on the person of the King of Portugal. One night, as he was returning in his chaise, with very few attendants, from an affair of gallantry, he was attacked and shot through the arm: the assassins thought their work completed. The King was not wounded mortally, and recovered in a few weeks. The Court’s ignorance of the murderers, and of the cause of the blow, prompted them to endeavour to conceal the fact. Their Ministers in foreign Courts were ordered to give out that the King had had a fall in his palace, had hurt his arm, and that during his incapacity of signing papers, the Queen would assume the reins of Government. A tale too ill-concerted, not to divulge the secret, supposing the assassination of a King could have remained a secret. Yet the notoriety of the fact led the public to no light into it. Revenge was undoubtedly the groundwork: but whether the revenge of an injured husband, of a dishonoured house, or of more holy murderers, all the curiosity of the public could not ascertain. The lady, supposed in question, was of illustrious blood--yet, jealous and vindictive as Portuguese and Spaniards are, they seldom carry their delicacy of honour so high as to think the wound irreparable, if given by their Sovereign. But there was another order of men, on whose ideas the generality reasoned differently: an order not so scrupulous about receiving affronts, or of returning injuries, where more essential interests than their honour is concerned. These were the Jesuits: they had long assumed dominion over Paraguay, and had established an economy of government there, which, while it ensured their authority by endearing them to the governed, almost made amends, by the felicity they established among the people of that province, for the numberless mischiefs they have brought on other countries. In short, the Jesuits alone indemnified the Americans of that region for the loss of their liberty, and atoned for some of the cruelties exercised by European conquerors. But the good fathers were not content with dispensing blessings as proxies for others: the Paraguayans must own their sceptre as well as their beneficence.