The Peninsula is "going it." Looking at the lapse of
time, a revolution in Portugal was almost over-due, and it has at last come to band. There is a sort of military mutiny all about the provinces, which in Portugal is dignified with the name of a revolution. It really is, however, only a singular form of that national fever else- where called a "Ministerial crisis." Here, the struggle for place is fought on the hustings and in the registration-courts ; in France, it is fought in the saloons of Paris, at conversazioni, in bureaus, and at visiting-calls ; in Portugal, the appeal lies to the Army. Here, an adverse division in the Commons settles the point ; there, a mutiny of the troops. Ministers are all alive—asking "extra- ordinary powers "—suspension of the habeas corpus, suppression of the press, and the like; but the most "extraordinary power" for a Portuguese Ministry is that of raising a loan of nearly half a mil- lion. The Cortes profess to have bestowed the power, though really they have only bestowed the power of asking for the money ; as Don Quixote authorized his squire to ask him for some "island."
Spain is not less moved; for two provinces having joined in an overt revolt, Ministers proclaim the whole kingdom under martial law ; and besides fighting in the usual way, the two parties are shooting off their prisoners as industriously as if a Spanish war- rior's renown lay in the number of scalps he could count up. The Ministers couch some of their most ferocious edicts in the Queen's name : either she must be under the most miserable delusion and compulsion, or
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