ENGLAND DEMANDS AN AMNESTY.

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annesty for all who shall tender their submission on or before a specified day; such amnesty, of course, to include retention of titles, honours, and property; and of military commissions, either on full or half-pay, for officers, according to the discretion of the Government; and restoration to the Queen's service for such non-commissioned officers and privates as choose to be so restored. Some few, and very few-probably not above ten-of the leading members of the Junta to retire for two or three years from Portugal. A new Ministry to be formed, consisting of men belonging neither to the Junta nor to the Cabral party. All edicts by which the Constitution has, in any of its parts, or in the whole, been suspended, to be immediately rescinded, and the Constitution, as it stood before the 6th of October last, to be immediately restored. The Cortes to be summoned to meet on some specified day, not too distant; and the elections to take place at a proper interval before their meeting. M. Diez to leave Portugal by the very next packet; and the system of Camarilla Government to be for ever left off. If the Junta should agree to these terms, the civil war would be over; and the fair and just demands of the Portuguese nation would be satisfied. The Junta, therefore, might be told, when those conditions were proposed to them, that if they should refuse them, the British Government would then be prepared to take an active part in favour of the Queen, and would join its forces to hers in order to restore peace to Portugal. Of course, in such case, the British Government must, however inconvenient it might be to do so, guarantee to the Junta the faithful performance of these conditions by the Queen; and probably there would, in such a case, be no difficulty in enforcing their execution. There can be little doubt that such a course would put an end to the war in a fortnight after it was resolved upon.

If the Queen should say that she could not adopt such a plan, because Saldanha would resign, the answer would be: That plan would render his resignation a matter of indifference; but we will offer you Colonel Wylde to take his place at once, or Colonel Wylde shall be Chef d'Etat-Major, to assist, with his skill and judgment, any Portuguese General whom you may place in nominal command.

If the civil war could be terminated in this manner, by England alone, without Spanish or French interference, the honour of the Queen would be saved, the liberties of the Portuguese nation would be respected, and the tie between England

and Portugal would remain unbroken. The despatches received this afternoon, from Lisbon and Oporto, seem to show the urgency of some energetic measure for putting an end to the calamities with which Portugal is now afflicted.

PALMERSTON.

Foreign Office: April 3, 1847.

My dear Seymour,-I send you instructions which I hope will put an end to the civil war. The only difficulty which I anticipate will be with the Queen, and with the people who govern her without her knowing it. But the recent change of Ministers at Madrid will probably help us,1 because if the new Ministers have any predilections towards Portugal, I should think it might be rather towards Oporto than towards Lisbon. At all events, we may be pretty sure that they will not let their troops enter Portugal without our consent, and, therefore, the Queen of Portugal must feel that her chances of assistance from Spain are much lessened, if not extinct. I trust she will agree to our terms. If she does not, we must rest upon our oars, and wait till one side or the other is fairly worn out by fatigue and exhaustion.

I say in my despatch that the amnesty ought to be full and general; and you should try all you can to get it made so. The Queen must be made to understand that we are greatly stretching our established principles of foreign policy by engaging to coerce the Junta in any case, and that unless she gives us the broadest possible ground to take our stand upon, we could not justify our course to Parliament and the country; and therefore she ought to make the amnesty without exception.

There certainly was little in the conduct of the British Foreign Office compatible with the principle of non-intervention, and it was only on the ground that we were saving the Sovereign from ruin, and the country from confusion, and establishing something like a system of liberality, moderation, and equity, that we could justify our course; but if we did that, we might fairly contend that we did justify it, considering our peculiar relations with Portugal, and admitting that States, like individuals, have duties which may inspire them with an interest in their neighbours' welfare.

The Pacheco Government.

RESISTANCE OF THE PORTUGUESE COURT.

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The Portuguese Government, however, as the next letter shows, raised difficulties which were unworthy of them, and fitting only the character of men who were being saved in spite of themselves.

F. O.: April 30, 1847.

My dear Normanby,-Our monetary affairs look better; panic is subsiding, and the funds rising; and the notion, which seems well founded, that the Emperor of Russia is going to invest a few millions sterling of his hoardings in our funds has had a cheering effect in the City to-day.

You will see that the Queen of Portugal, or rather her advisers, stand out about sending a dozen men to live at the expense of the Portuguese Government for six months at Paris. If the subject-matter were less serious, one should call this childish. It is infatuation. They seem determined to put the throne of the Queen upon the result of a battle. If they have the best of the fight, they will not essentially mend their position, and if they have the worst of it, the Queen will be in great peril ; and at all events, if saved by us, will undergo the humiliation of submitting, after defeat, to terms which, before the battle, she might have worn the appearance of imposing. If we were merely messengers between the Government and the Junta, we should willingly have conveyed the Queen's demand for the temporary banishment of the sixteen or eighteen persons in question, but we had taken the resolution to combine with France and Spain to compel the Junta to submit, on the terms to be announced to them. It was necessary that we should be careful that the terms were such that a refusal of the Junta to agree to them would justify us and our allies in undertaking the conquest of Portugal, for such the compelling operation would be in the present temper of the Portuguese; and whether that conquest might be difficult or easy, whether a short or a long operation, it would be an undertaking to which heavy responsibility would necessarily attach, and which the English Government at least ought to be able to justify to Parliament and to the world. Now we think that, supposing, as is probable, that the Junta should agree to submit on the terms offered them, provided the amnesty were general, but should refuse to consent to their own banishment, the expulsion for six months of a dozen and a half of men would not be an object of sufficient importance to justify the conquest and subjugation of Portugal in order to attain it.

Firmness, however, carried the day, as it usually does when it has right on its side.

F. O.: May 6, 1847.

My dear Seymour, We have received your despatches, giving us an account of the Queen's acceptance of our terms. I am delighted; it is indeed good news, and I trust we shall soon hear that the Junta have accepted also, and that this calamitous civil war has been brought to a close.

The Cortes ought to meet as soon as the preliminary arrangements can be made for it, and the sooner the Queen can substitute tongues for muskets, as instruments of civil and political strife, the better for her and her kingdom.

Saldanha's army is full of Cabralist officers. It is not very likely that Saldanha and his officers should attempt any prank, and fall back towards Lisbon, to coerce the Queen, and prevent her from acceding to our terms; but if he were to do so, he might be told that we will coerce him just as readily as the Junta, and that he had better take care what he is about.

The British fleet was now directed to protect the Queen of Portugal's Government from an attack by the Viscount Sa da Bandiera, or any other of the leaders of the Revolutionary party. But Lord Palmerston considered the desired work was only half done so long as the constitution was dormant, and Parliamentary government not firmly re-established.

C. G. May 26, 1847.

My dear Seymour,-I hope you will not have had occasion to employ force to protect Lisbon from attack by Sa da Bandiera : but if it has become necessary, I have no doubt it will have been done with effect, and the means at Sir William Parker's disposal will have proved amply sufficient. As to the demands of the Junta, we must be as firm in resisting any unreasonable pretentions of theirs as we were in refusing to comply with the overstrained expectations of the Court. Napier has been appointed to the St. Vincent, that he may go to Lisbon and take the command there when Parker moves on to the Mediterranean. We want to collect a larger force within that sea than we now have there; and with Parker and Napier, both with their flags flying there and thereabouts, we shall probably have Joinville on his good behaviour.

SUBMISSION OF THE JUNTA.

C. G. June 13, 1847.

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Nothing can be more satisfactory than the course of things in Portugal, as far as we have hitherto learned them, and I trust that by this time the Junta will have submitted, and Bandiera also, and that the people in Algarve and in the other provinces having followed the example thus set them, the civil war will have become completely ended, and tranquillity will have been entirely restored. Now then comes the time for keeping a tight hand on the Portuguese Government, as to the faithful and immediate execution of the four conditions, which they must not, under any pretence whatever, evade. The men now in power will try to put off the elections and the meeting of the Cortes, because they will fear that the elections will go against them, and that the majority in the Cortes, being for the Liberal party, will turn them out, and put another set of men in. But to this they must make their minds up. What we have intended to do, and what the Portuguese Government is pledged to us to do, is to transfer from the field of battle to the floor of Parliament the conflict of political parties in Portugal. The people, or at least a large portion of them, said they had grievances which required redress. The Queen's Government told them they should have no Parliament in which to state and represent those grievances. The reply of the people was natural and just: they flew to arms. Driven from the hustings and from Parliament, they sought refuge in the field. We have said to the Queen's Government that they must give back a Parliament, and that then the people must lay down their arms. The people have laid down, or are about to lay down their arms. The Queen must give back the Parliament; upon this point there must be no mistake.

C. G.: July 6, 1847.

I am just come home, at half-past one, from the House of Commons, so my letter will not be long. I am glad to find that the Oporto Junta have at last given in. This puts an end to the civil war for the moment; whether it will be renewed or not depends on the Queen. If she fulfils faithfully her engagement, and governs in the true spirit of the Constitution, the Liberal party may be content with wielding power according to law; and being no longer fearful of being stripped of it, may be satisfied without upsetting or attacking the throne. But if the Queen breaks faith, or allows herself to follow the lead of the Cabral party, she will be, as you said in a former letter, a