5. JOSEPH DA COSTA, PEREIRA FURTADO DE MENDONIA.--Da Costa was a native of _Colonia da Sacramenta_, on the river La Plata; but he suffered from the Inquisition in Portugal. In his “Narrative,” he says, “Three or four days had elapsed, after my arrival at Lisbon from England, in July, 1802, when a magistrate abruptly entered my apartments, and telling me who he was, informed me that he had orders to seize all my papers, and to conduct me to prison, where I was to be rigorously kept aloof from all communication. I doubted whether he were the person he represented himself to be, not only on account of his unpolished manners, but also because he had neither his official staff, nor any other sign of power; and though I knew that this was an error of essential consequence in a magistrate, that it justified me in impugning his authority, and considering him as a mere intruder upon the sacred asylum of my abode, I invited him civilly to sit down, and entreated that he would show me the order he pretended to possess, or tell me by whose authority it had been issued. He then showed me a letter from the intendant-general of police, which directed my imprisonment, the seizure of my papers, and that endeavours should be made to find, upon or about me, some masonical decorations. The motive of this proceeding, as stated in the _order_, was, that I had been to England without a previous passport. “When I had read this fatal note, all the sorrowful consequences of an imprisonment rushed upon my mind, sensible that the fury of my persecutor would know no limits. I had sufficient coolness, however, to represent to this myrmidon of justice, that the harsh treatment of the intendant-general, without having any previous information of my case, was not a little surprising, since, so far from having gone to England without a passport, I had previously procured one from his Royal Highness the Prince Regard, which leave I had solicited, in consequence of being employed in the royal service as one of the literary directors of the royal printing-office, and my not deeming it proper to leave the kingdom without my sovereign’s permission; that I had not only obtained leave of absence, in writing, from the secretary of state’s office, and procured a formal passport from the minister of foreign affairs, but that the minister of finance had charged me, by the sovereign’s command, to transact some business relative to the royal service in London; and that, in proof of this, I could show him the official letters, some of which were directed to me in Lisbon, before my departure, and others were forwarded to London after my arrival in that city. I pleaded, therefore, my right to expect that the intendant-general of police should have been informed of all this, before he proceeded against me with such severity, or alleged, as a cause of his proceedings against me, that I had gone to England without a passport.