Although the trial was fair, and has been officially declared such by Canalejas, a man who holds no friendship for the causes of Catholicity and Spanish right, nevertheless the news of Ferrer's execution raised a commotion throughout the world. Strangely enough the odium of the act was saddled directly upon the Catholic Church, against which the secular press delivered itself of diatribes full of bitterness. The fact seemed to be forgotten, or concealed, that the Church had no more to do with the execution than an infant just born. In fact the Holy Father himself had written in terms of clemency; but his advices were disregarded. The matter was purely a political one, the case of a convicted revolutionist, found guilty by one of the fairest courts in the world, and upon the most disinterested testimony. Happily the better instincts of civilization soon awoke to the real character of the whole proceeding, and the Church was exonerated among good men from any complicity, however just, in the death of the traitor. CHAPTER IX. The Crisis in Portugal. Portugal has never yet recovered from the disasters which crushed it at the end of the sixteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth it was already in a state of decadence, which followed principally on the ruin of the marvelous empire of the Indies, won by Vasco de Gama, Albuquerque, and Juan de Castro, the subjection of Portugal to England by the Treaty of Methuen, and finally in a moral abasement such as the times were then producing in France and all countries affected by the French Revolution. This decadence was easily favorable to the reign of the sophists, the encyclopaedists and other open or secret enemies of religion. It was in Portugal that the notorious Pombal exercised his power by a brutal expulsion of the Jesuits, who had brought so much glory to their fatherland by their missionary successes in Brazil, Paraguay and India. Pombal had misused the resources of Portugal, leaving that little nation a prey to a profound demoralization, which betrayed itself especially in the higher classes of society. When the French Revolution broke out, Portugal was weakened by its economic dependence on England, a country which took away the wines and olives, and flooded the land with its own industrial products. In this way the triumphal progress of the French armies placed Portugal in a very delicate position. It became a question of following England, and inviting the wrath of the French, or of yielding to Napoleon with the consequent certainty of invasion and ruin. [Illustration: MANUEL II.] The Prince Regent of Portugal at the time was John VI. of Braganza, who was enjoined by Napoleon to close his ports to the English, and to expel all English persons residing in the country. Upon the refusal of the Regent, Napoleon sent General Junot with an army against Portugal, and John VI. in his terror embarked with his Court for Brazil.