THREE:Spain and Portugal are so bound together by natural sympathy that they generally share the same vicissitudes. Bad feeling had arisen between the national party and the Government in consequence of the appointment of Prince Ferdinand, the husband of the queen, to be commander-in-chief of the army. Other causes increased the popular discontent, which was at its height when the public was electrified by the news of the Spanish Revolution. The Ministers were obliged to make concessions; but, besides being inadequate, they were too late. The steamboat from Oporto was loaded with opposition members, who were received with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome. On the 9th of September the clubs had everything arranged for a revolution, and a mixed array of troops of the line, ca?adors, and National Guards, proclaimed the Constitution adopted by John VI.; and, having sung a constitutional hymn, they appointed a deputation, headed by Viscount Sa Bandiera, to wait upon Queen Donna Maria. She had first contemplated resistance, but the army would not act against the people. The National Guards were in possession of the city, having occupied the Rocio Square in Lisbon all night, and in the morning they were informed that the queen had yielded to their wishes, appointing a new Ministry, with Bandiera at its head. Some of the most obnoxious of the ex-Ministers took refuge from popular vengeance on board the ships of the British squadron lying in the Tagus. Most of the peers protested against the Revolution; but it was an accomplished fact, and they were obliged to acquiesce.
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THREE:The House, meanwhile, seemed to have been getting still more involved in the meshes of these difficulties. Stockdale commenced a fourth and fifth action against Hansard; an order was issued for the arrest of his attorney for contempt, and he was ultimately lodged in Newgate. But he afterwards brought actions against all the officers of the House that had been concerned in his arrest and had searched his premises. On the 17th of February Lord John Russell informed the House that he had a petition to present from Messrs. Hansard to the effect that a fifth action had been commenced against them by Stockdale for the same course as before. It was then moved that Stockdale, and the son of Howard, his attorney, a lad of nineteen, and his clerk, by commencing this action had been guilty of a contempt of the House. This was carried by a majority of 71, and they, too, were imprisoned.
THREE:The affairs of Italy were the subject of warm debates in the British Parliament in the Session of 1849. Lord Palmerston was assailed by the Conservatives for having countenanced the Sicilian insurrection, and for having sent Lord Minto to Italy on a mission of conciliation, which they considered an unwarrantable meddling in the affairs of foreign countries. His assailants, he said, belonged to a school which maintained "the right divine to govern wrong," and they therefore stigmatised the Sicilians as rebels. But the Sicilians had had a Constitution for centuries, and their ancient and indisputable rights were confirmed in 1812. As to Lord Minto, he interfered at the instance of the King of Naples himself. The Treaty of Vienna recognised the title of the king as King of the Two Sicilies; "but the recognition of a title was one thing, the overturning of a Constitution another."
THREE:On the 23rd of March the Allied sovereigns, including that of the United Kingdom, signed, by their plenipotentiaries, a new treaty of alliance offensive and defensive, on the same principles as the Treaty of Chaumont, entered into in March, 1814. The Duke of Wellington then hastened away to Belgium to muster his forces therefor Belgium, as it had been so often before, was sure to become the battle-ground on this occasion. So early as the 5th of April he announced that he had placed thirteen thousand four hundred men in the fortresses of Belgium, and had besides twenty-three thousand British and Hanoverian troops, twenty thousand Dutch and Belgian, and sixty pieces of artillery. Unfortunately, the bulk of his victorious army of the Peninsula had been sent to the inglorious contest with America, where a good naval blockade would have been the most effectual kind of warfare. But he observed that Buonaparte would require some time to assemble a strong force, and this time must be employed by Britain to collect a correspondingly powerful army. The Duke, with accustomed energy, not only applied himself with all his strength to this object, but to stimulating, by letters, the Allied sovereigns to hasten up their quotas, some of them notoriously the slowest nations in the world.The number of Catholics in Britain at the time of passing the Relief Bill was estimated by themselves at nearly 1,000,000, scattered, in various proportions, through England, Scotland, and Wales. Of these, 200,000 were resident in London. The most Catholic counties in England were Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Cheshire, Northumberland, Durham, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent. In Ireland the Roman Catholics were estimated at five millions and a half; and the Protestants, of all denominations, at one million and three-quarters. By the removal of the disabilities eight English Catholic peers were enabled to take their seats by right in the House of Lords. The Catholic baronets in England were then sixteen in number. In Ireland there were eight Roman Catholic peers; in Scotland, two. The system of religious exclusion had lasted 271 years, from the passing of the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559.