Portugal was the intimate ally of England as Spain was of France. The hereditary connection of Portugal and England dated back for many centuries, and had been strengthened by the Methuen Treaty in 1703, which had made Portugal largely dependent on England. The great Portuguese minister, Pombal, who had commenced the persecution of the Jesuits and had effected internal and administrative reforms, comparable to those of Aranda in Spain, had been disgraced in 1777, but the offices of State were filled by his pupils and managed on the principle, which he had initiated, of advancing the prosperity of the people. Pombal, while holding the strongest views on the importance of maintaining the royal absolutism, believed in the modern doctrines of reform; he had abolished slavery, encouraged education, and in the received ideas of political economy had encouraged by means of protection manufactures and agriculture. The essential weakness of Portugal rested, like that of Spain, on the exhaustion and consequent lethargy of its people; the Jesuits and the Inquisition had stamped out freedom of thought. Financially, also, its condition resembled that of Spain, for the sovereign derived such wealth from Brazil as to be independent of taxes, levied on the people. Politically the aim of the House of Braganza, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, had been to endeavour to free itself from dependence on England by uniting closely through inter-marriages with the reigning family in Spain. Queen Maria I., who had succeeded Joseph, the patron of Pombal, in 1777, was a fanatical lady of weak intellect, and in 1789 the royal power was in the hands of the heir-apparent, Prince John, who was recognised as Regent some years later, and eventually succeeded to the throne in 1816, as John VI. [Sidenote: Italy.] [Sidenote: Naples: Ferdinand IV.] [Sidenote: Sicily.] [Sidenote: Rome: Pope Pius VI.] [Sidenote: Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold.] [Sidenote: Parma: Duke Ferdinand.] [Sidenote: Modena: Duke Hercules III.] [Sidenote: Lombardy.] [Sidenote: Sardinia: Victor Amadeus III.] [Sidenote: Lucca: Republic.] [Sidenote: Genoa: Republic.] [Sidenote: Venice.]