members, since Vasconcellos had taken upon him to bestow benefices as rewards for the services of his creatures; that the people were loaded with taxes, the country destitute of husbandmen, and the towns deserted by soldiers, who were forcibly carried off to Catalonia; that the late orders received for the nobles to repair to that country, on pretence of arriere-ban, was the finishing stroke of the prime minister's politics, who wished by these means to rid himself of the principal persons of the nation, whom he regarded as the only obstacles to his pernicious designs; that the least evil they had to apprehend was, a tedious banishment; that they would thus grow old, miserable, exiles in the interior of Castille, whilst a new colony would take possession of their property as a right of conquest; that as to himself, the frightful prospect of such accumulated misfortunes, would make him pray for a speedy death, sooner than behold the total destruction of his country, were it not for the hope that so great a number of distinguished persons as were then present, would never have assembled in vain. This harangue greatly affected the assembly, and revived the recollection of former miseries. Every individual brought forward some instance of cruelty in Vasconcellos. Some had been deprived of their property by his injustice, whilst others complained of being dispossessed of hereditary employments and governments, in favour of his friends and followers. Several had been unjustly imprisoned as suspected persons, and others regretted their fathers, brothers, and friends, who were either detained in Madrid, or sent to Catalonia as hostages for the fidelity of their countrymen. In short, there was not one amongst them who, in the general cause, had not likewise some private injury which called for vengeance. The Catalonia business was an object of universal indigustion; since nothing could be more clear, than that their complete destruction, and not the want of this aid, was the motive which induced the court of Spain to send them so far from home. All these considerations, joined to the flattering hope of revenging such repeated injuries, decided them on taking effectual measures to throw off so heavy a yoke; and foreseeing no possible means of mitigating their misery, they reproached themselves for their patient submission, which they began to regard as mean and cowardly, whilst all agreed in the pressing necessity of driving out the Spaniards, though they differed in the mode of government they should afterwards adopt.