On the death of Joseph I., in 1777, Maria Francesca Isabella, his eldest daughter, succeeded to the royal dignity. The superstitious temperament of this queen, and her natural infirmity, which terminated in confirmed mental alienation, disqualified her for the administration of the governmental powers on sound principles of public policy, and surrendered her to the selfish control of a corrupt priesthood and ambitious nobility. By the intrigues of these two classes, which seldom scruple to sacrifice the popular interest to their personal advantage, Pombal was deprived of his useful political influence, most of his regulations were abolished, and Portugal, from the dawn of a magnificent future, sunk into the obscurity and lethargy of her former condition. In 1817 John VI., who had been regent during the imbecility of the queen, from 1795 to her death, ascended the throne. The spirit of French republicanism exerted a liberalizing influence over Europe generally, and had apparently a similar effect on the pope and his machinery. Those who did not understand the profoundity of sacerdotal craft might have been stupefied with astonishment to see a pope, while professing to be infallible, discarding principles and policies which had been approved by the practice, and defended by the anathemas of his predecessors. He not only sanctioned the prohibition of Portugal forbidding Jesuists from entering the kingdom, and consented to the abolition of the inquisition, but even requested that all persecution against the Jews should cease, and that they should be admitted to greater rights and privileges. The popular current had set in too strongly in favor of change in the constitution and administration of the government for papal sagacity to oppose, and unobstructed by the sacerdotal machinery, it became daily augmented in volume and impetuosity. The liberal feeling of the nation, allowed spontaneously to flow, culminated in 1820 in establishing, without violence or bloodshed, a provisional government and a new cortes. Tolerance on the lips of a Catholic priest is treason to Rome; and, though this circumstance might have cautioned prudence against investing any of them with power, yet as they had warmly espoused the liberal cause, they were elected by the people as members to the cortes, with the exception of a few lawyers and governmental officers. At the assemblage of the cortes, under the presidency of the archbishop of Braga, the revolutionary measures were sanctioned, the inquisition forever interdicted, and a constitution framed which secured freedom of person and property, the liberty of the press, and legal equality. The king approved the provisions of this constitution, and swore to support it. But under this prosperous appearance of republican progress, the demon of religious intolerance was secretly at work; availing itself of every means to arrest the popular current. The portentous mutterings of an approaching storm were