When Dom John took the government of Portugal into his hands in 1792, popular attention was concentrated throughout Europe on the progress of the French Revolution. The interest excited in Portugal was as great as it was everywhere else, for the ideas, which were at the bottom of the most important movement of modern times, had been eagerly received in the literary circles of Lisbon. It is absurd to suppose that there was any great democratic party in the country, for as long as the administration was well carried on, and taxes were not oppressive, the mass of the people were absolutely indifferent as to the nature of the government. It was different with regard to the more educated classes, who had been brought up in the doctrines of the encyclopædists, and who had read Rousseau and Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu. These men were sceptical about the advantages of a benevolent despotism; they had studied the history of their own nation, and knew that in former days, before the discovery of gold in Brazil, the Cortes had been frequently summoned, and they desired that it should meet regularly, and that the Portuguese people should once more take a part in legislation by means of its old representative assembly. Some of them went further, and inspired by the example of the great American Revolution, dreamed of a republic, while others adopted all the fantastic political and social ideas of Rousseau. But these men were mere theorists; they were to be found only among a small circle of educated noblemen and bourgeois in Lisbon and Oporto; and their fancies were quite unknown to the mass of the population. These were the men who hailed with joy the capture of the Bastille, and the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, and who openly expressed their sympathy with the new order of things in France. [Illustration: A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID-SERVANT. (_From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal”, 1795._)]