Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

from the Ministry by legal means; but the proceedings of the majorities in both Chambers convinced every one of its impossibility. The only thing I could do to avoid such rising was to accept the invitation of many of our brave companions in arms, who, horrified at the future which the presence of the Count of Thomar in the Ministry prepared for us, urged me to put myself at their head, and by a military demonstration obtain the result which the nation wishes, needs, and will infallibly obtain. Until this moment all the chiefs of the popular party have remained quiet; but your Excellency may rest assured that in the same instant in which they are convinced that the military demonstration at the head of which I resolved to place myself, is not sufficient to overthrow the extortioner who oppresses the nation, a movement will manifest itself in all the provinces the end of which no human perspicacity can foresee. I have just been told your Excellency has marched out of Lisbon at the head of some troops to support the peculating Minister-the man who unites in himself all the corruption and all the odium of the nation. I have the pleasing conviction that not one of those who accompany your Excellency will fail to participate in my ideas and in my wishes to deliver the nation from the yoke which oppresses it. Duke of Terceira! if you forget that after our time there is an inexorable tribunal called history, in which the glorious pages to which your Excellency has an incontestable right will be completely neutralized by those in which you will appear as the champion of the corrupt man, the infamous extortioner, the known prevaricator, remember, at least,

that your Excellency's conduct not only places the throne of Her Majesty the Queen in imminent danger, but likewise causes her dynasty to run the greatest risk. Should your Excellency persist, to me the honour will be due of having done, for fourteen months, all that lay in human power to avoid the evils of a revolution-to your Excellency the disgrace of having rendered it necessary, indispensable. Let us remember that if in heaven there is God's justice, the laws of morality are likewise not prohibited on earth. This insurrection will not be a struggle of parties; their interests will be foreign to it; its object will be a graver one-that of proving to Europe that the Portuguese nation will not consent that a system of corruption, of peculations, and unconstitutionalisms, should be raised on high by means of the Government and political doctrine. The movement represents purely and simply the resistance of the nation to the moral death which was prepared for it after prolonged agonies. The country, during the indifference with which the Government has considered its most urgent necessities, and in the cry of anguish which it raises at this moment, limits itself to beg for justice and morality.

"Your Excellency can avert the evils which menace us, save the country from the horrors you are preparing for it, by causing Her Majesty the Queen to dismiss immediately this man, fatal in so many respects, and call to the Ministry persons deserving the national confidence. Never has there rested upon your Excellency so grave a responsibility as at this moment.

"Duke of SALDANHA."

But neither the army nor the people seemed to favour Saldanha's views, and he found himself almost destitute of support. The King left Lisbon at the head of a strong military force in search of the Duke, but the latter did not venture to come to an engagement; and he retired to the neighbourhood of Oporto, in hopes that that city would pronounce in his favour.

He made an effort to induce the Count de Casal, who commanded the garrison at Oporto, to join him; but that officer remained firm in his duty and allegiance, and replied to Saldanha's summons in these

terms:

"Sir, However great may be the affection and deference we feel for your Excellency, I cannot, as a soldier and General of the 3rd Military Division, but fulfil, even at the sacrifice of my life, the duty I owe to Her Majesty the Queen; maintaining intact the prerogatives of the Crown, which I am determined to sustain with the brave and faithful garrison I command." But there was disaffection amongst the troops under his command, and on his ordering the arrest of some officers whose designs he suspected, an insurrection of the garrison broke out, which the Count de Casal was unable to quell. He therefore at last, on the 25th of April, abruptly quitted Oporto, attended by only one aide-de-camp. A colonel of infantry, in endeavouring to restore order and obedience, was shot by the soldiers.

In the mean time the Duke of Saldanha was wandering a fugitive, no one exactly knew where. He had been disappointed in his hopes of a general rising, and his only chance of safety seemed to be in his escape as quickly as possible

66

from the soil of Portugal. The news that Oporto had declared in his favour overtook him on the 27th of April, just as he had entered Gallicia, and he immediately turned his horse's head and rode back. He reached Oporto late in the afternoon, and met with a most enthusiastic reception. One account says: The whole city seemed to vomit forth its inhabitants, and for two leagues on the route by which he was expected the road was a complete mass of people on foot, on horseback, and in carriages. In the city, the streets which he had to pass along were a living mass, colours of all nations waved across from house to house, the windows were hung with draperies, and filled with all the beauty and fashion of the place."

By this time the tide had everywhere turned in Saldanha's favour, and the Queen resolved to make at once a virtue of necessity, and, accepting the hasty resignation of Count Thomar, who took refuge on board an English vessel of war, she dispatched a telegraphic message to Oporto, by which she desired the Duke of Saldanha to come immediately to the capital, "as the good of the State required it."

The result was, that Saldanha came in triumph to Lisbon, and a ministry was formed, on the 22nd of May, consisting of the following members:

Duke of Saldanha, President of the Council, and Minister ad interim of War.

Jose Ferreira Pestana, Minister of the Interior.

Joaquim Felipe de Soure, of Justice.

Marquis de Loulé, of Marine. Marino Miguel Frangini, of Finance.

Jervis de Attoguia, of Foreign Affairs.

SPAIN.-Early in January the Narvaez Ministry resigned, owing, as was generally believed, to the hostility with which it was regarded by the Queen-mother Christina, and on the 15th of that month a new Cabinet was formed, consisting of the following members:

M. Bravo Murillo, Minister of Finance and President of the Council. M. Beltran de Lis, Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Count Mirasol, Minister at War.
M. Ventura Gonzalez Romero,

Minister of Grace and Justice.

M. José M. Bustilles, Minister of Marine.

M. Fernin Arteta, Minister of the Interior, and

M. Fernando Negrete, of Com

merce.

On the 20th of December the Queen was safely delivered of a daughter.

GERMANY.-DRESDEN CONFERENCES.-We stated in our last volume, that we would give in the present an account of the Conferences held at Dresden by the representatives of the different German States to determine their future policy. But at that time it was believed and expected that some interest would attend these deliberations, and that some of the important questions which have so long agitated Germany would receive a definite solution. Nothing, however, occurred worthy of the notice of the historian. There was much discussion, but no progress; and the result was a general consent to return to the status quo, and resuscitate the Frankfort Diet as it existed previously to the revolutionary year of 1848.

The abortive Conferences were

virtually terminated in March, but they nominally lingered on until May. We think we cannot better describe their proceedings and the result, than by quoting the folwhich appeared in the Allgemeine lowing passage respecting them Zeitung:

"After their formal close they will be forgotten as a total failure, and the reorganization of Germany will immediately be discussed at Warsaw by the Monarchs in person, and the Presidents of their respective Cabinets. All the agitation, labour, and exchange of notes has only led to the recognition of the old Constitution and the old Diet as the basis and body of the political system. The reforms, improvement, and innovations lie still veiled in the deepest obscurity of the future, and will first become visible in the second half of the present month. Perhaps conditions may be made in Warsaw that may favour one State at the cost of another; now is the right moment for Prussia to beware that, under the appearance of an increase of power over the small States, it is not itself placed in the rank of secondary powers."

The final sitting took place on the 15th of May, when the following resolution was adopted by the representatives present:

"Whereas by the concurrence of all the States to the Frankfort Diet a generally acknowledged organ of the Confederated German States has sprung into existence; whereas the action of the Commissions of the Conferences has been concluded by the submission of their respective reports; and whereas, according to the protocol of this day, a conviction has been obtained that all the Federal States agree as to the modes and objects

of their endeavours, but that an immediate and unconditional assent of all the Federal Governments to all the proposals of the Commissions could not be obtained, it has been thought expedient to close the Conferences. In so doing, all the Federal Governments declare themselves to be generally agreed on those points which the Commissions established as leading points, and on this basis they promise to continue the consultations in the Federal Diet. The propositions of the first Commission in particular, respecting the transaction of business in the Diet and the preparation of a number of troops to be placed at the disposal of the said Diet, are acknowledged by all the Governments to be useful, expedient, and necessary. They consequently promise to instruct their agents to assent to these proposals, whenever the same are submitted to the sanction of the Diet."

The end, therefore, of all the revolutionary movements which have distracted Germany since February, 1848, and of all the innumerable projects for the regeneration of the Fatherland which from time to time appeared and enjoyed a short-lived popularity— has been the restoration of the old Frankfort Diet as it had existed since 1815. It seemed as if the nations had been asleep for four years, and dreamt of revolutions, but on awakening found themselves precisely in the same situation in which they were at the beginning of their slumber. Prussia and Austria and all the other States sent their representatives to the Diet as of old, and before the end of May its sittings began. But nothing of sufficient general interest occurred to make its deliberations worth recording in our pages.

AUSTRIA.-The return of Austria to her old system of absolute government, and the utter worthlessness of the promises made by the Emperor and his advisers during the revolutionary storm of 1848 to adopt in future a more constitutional policy, were signifi cantly shown by the publication of the following letters addressed by the Emperor Francis Joseph to Prince Schwarzenberg and Baron Kübeck.

MOST HIGH CABINET LETTER TO THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT.

"Dear Prince Schwarzenberg,As the responsibility of the Cabinet as it now stands is devoid of legal distinctness and exactitude, my duties as a Monarch induce me to relieve Ministers from the doubtful political position in which, as my counsellors, and as the highest executive organs, they are placed, by declaring that they are responsible to no other political authority than the Throne.

now

"1. The Cabinet has to swear in my hands unconditional fidelity, as also the engagement to fulfil all Imperial resolutions and ordi

nances.

"2. The Cabinet will in this new position have punctually to carry out my resolutions concerning all laws, ordinances, maxims of administration, &c., may they have been considered necessary or judicious by Ministers, or may the latter have been directed by me to consult on and propose them.

"3. The Cabinet, and each Minister in his department, is responsible to me for the exact observance of the existing laws and Imperial ordinances, in their administration. To each Minister is intrusted the direction of that branch of the Administration with

I, however,

which he is charged. reserve to myself the right of issuing more exact regulations on this point.

"4. The Ministerial contrasignature is in future confined to the publication of laws and Imperial ordinances, and will be that of the Minister-President, or of that of those Ministers with whose branch the matter in question is connected. The Director of the Chancellery of the Cabinet will sign under the closing formula of By most high command,' which will stand towards the side.

"These contra-signatures are as a warranty that the appointed forms have been observed, and that the Imperial ordinances have been punctually and exactly carried out.

"5. By the publication of laws and Imperial ordinances the words 'After having heard my Cabinet,' will be substituted for On the proposition of my Cabinet.'

FRANZ JOSEPH (M.P.). "Schönbrünn, Aug. 20, 1851."

[ocr errors]

not to be presented by the Cabinet to the Reichsrath for its opinion, but always to me. Agreeably to par. 7 of its statutes, I reserve to myself the right of demanding the opinion of the Reichsrath, and of directing the discussion of matters under my own immediate direction or that of its President.

"3. I reserve to myself the right of commanding the attendance of Ministers or their deputies at the councils of the Reichsrath, according to circumstances and necessity.

"The alterations in the order of business and in other matters arising from the ordinances, you have to lay before me without loss of time. If draughts of laws which have been forwarded by the Cabinet to the Reichsrath are still under discussion, due notice is to be given to me, and under all circumstances the results of the deliberations of the Council are to be laid before me.

[ocr errors]

"FRANZ JOSEPH (M.P.). Schönbrunn, Aug. 20, 1851."

MOST HIGH CABINET LETTER ΤΟ THE PRESIDENT OF THE REICHS

RATH (COUNCIL OF THE EMPIRE). "Dear Baron Kübeck,-You will learn by the subjoined copy of my ordinance to the Cabinet the resolutions which I have taken relative to the responsibility and to the future position of my Cabinet. These resolutions induce me to introduce some changes in the statutes of my Reichsrath:

"1. The Reichsrath is from this time forward to be considered as my Council and the Council of the Throne.

"2. In consequence of this declaration, draughts of laws, ordinances, or other such matters, have

[blocks in formation]
« EdellinenJatka »