LESSONS IN ENGLISH HISTORY, FOR JOHN BULL.
THE John Bull of last Sunday brings forward in defence of the conduct of Don MIGUEL an argument of rather a singular kind for so loyal and so English a journal. The John Bull does not go to deny or to extenuate the Portuguese executions ; but to show, that more numerous executions took place in England in consequence of the attempts of the Jacobites, than have taken place in Portugal in consequence of the attempts of the Constitutionalists. There is no disputing of tastes, and therefore we shall not dispute the taste of our contemporary in assimilating our Revolution of 1688 to the overthrow of the Portuguese Cortes, and King WILLIAM of glorious memory to the present ruler of Portugal : but there are some assertions touching matter of fact, in the article in which the comparison is made, that are not undeserving of notice. Granting the conduct of JAMES to have been no more hostile to the spirit and letter of the constitution of England, than was the somewhat hasty but well-meant innovation of Don PEDRO to the spirit and letter of the constitution of Portugal, and that an attempt to set the King above the law, and an attempt to set the law above the King arely a subject of GEORGE the Fourth, in the year 1829, to be considered as morally and politically identical,— there are yet some particulars in which the case of MIGUEL and that of WILLIAM differ.
1st. MIGUEL has deposed his•brother ; WILLIAM only deposed his father-in-law. Kin and kind are two things among monarchs as well as among men; but more may fairly be expected from one of the same house and of the same nation than of an alien in blood and in birthplace. 2nd. MIGUEL deposed his brother by means of the power which his brother had placed in his hands. Had not PEDRO granted the constitution to Portugal, MIGUEL would still have been in Irienna.
3rd. MIGUEL deposed his brother after he had voluntarily sworn to support him.
Every pmeicular in the case of WILLIAM was different. He came to England with his own forces, with an open avowal of his intention to redress its grievances, and while his father in-law was yet seated on the throne, and could wield the power which his position cave him to repel his enemies. It is true he had no claim of ri :lit to the sovereignty. He was an usurper, chosen by the people of England,—but how chosen ? how confirmed? The Convention Parliament might be an irregular affair, but its irregularity is of no importance to the question, since its acts were confirmed by the Parliament that followed, to which no irregularity is imputable. And what was the character of that court by which the rights of WILLIAM were acknowledged ? One branch of it, with a very few exceptions, had been in the yearly habit of assembling to discuss the highest objects of national policy from the period of its first convocation by LEICESTER: the other had formed the council of the Monarch from the Conquest, to go no further back; and no other representative of the public voice had been known or acknowledged for more than four hundred years. Compare with this Parliament of England—the most minute particular of whose summoning, electing, and holding, had been the subject of legal enactment for centuries—the miscellaneous assembly that hailed Don MIGUEL King of Portug,al. The ancient Cortes of Portugal were altogether a temporary council. They had no fixed period of deliberating—no regular mode of election—no distinctive character : they were made up of deputies of the towns, nominees of the King and of the clergy, without stated rule as to the number of the whole or of the constituent parts ; they were summoned or they met as the caprice of the Monarch or their own dictated ; mid they had not in point of fact been called together for a hundred and thirty years before. Their declaration is now before us. It says not a word on the mode in which the court was constituted; there is no mention of verification of commissions; one man signs for his friend, another for his brother, peer for peer, deputy for deputy ; towns are named from which it was impossible any return could have been made*, and where returns were possible, there is no proof of their authenAicity. The advocates of MIGUEL have talked big about this precious court and its decree : to us his flimsy and insufficient title, and his outrageously foolish conduct, (to speak in the most lenient terms) appear more tolerable than the open and impudent quackery of the sham council under cover of which it is sought to strengthen the one and palliate the other. We have been, perhaps, more particular than the ease deserves ; but there is an appearance of research in our friend Bull's. remarks that provokes minute criticism. He advises the Times, to whom he is replying, to read the History of England,—which, he says, is " very pretty reading, and to him (the advisee ia question) no doubt doubly interesting from its novelty.That the Iiislory of England contains a few novelties of which our friend Jo,.mm is unaware, is pretty obvious from his statement. He tells us of a batch of Peers sentenced to die; and that among them were two. in behalf of whom their ladies—the Countess of • NITHSDAL:: 1 Lady Nairne (Oh the Cockney !)—threw themselves at the a. ..ee's feet, and implored his mercy ; " but their tears arid entreat#" mi no.(yfeet:" So says Snot: LETT of Lady NITHSD ALE and Lady N in' (not Nuirns); but had Ball looked a little further, he would have found that their tears and entreaties had effect, for NAIRN was careoeed under the act of mice that passed in the month of July subsequent to his condemnation, 4, There is a deputy for Gua! and which set free not only NAIRN, but all the prisoners that had been engaged in the rebellion: NITHSDALE had previously escaped. We have then another bit of SmoLLErr (who, by the by, was a notorious Jacobite), concerning, not the same rebellion, but a rebellion that took place thirty years after, under a different King and a different Pretender. In the latter, BALMERINO and KILMARNOCK, and subsequently old LOVAT suffered; and, adds John, "Mr. RATCLIFF, titular Earl of Derwentwater, on a sentence passed thirty years before." RAecieree was condemned and outlawed for his share in the rebellion of 1715 ; he was taken in a vessel bound to Scotland, on his way to join the young Pretender in the rebellion of 1745. We may pity the titular Earl, but we must confess that, except hanging, there seems no way of getting rid of a man whom thirty years' experience would not counsel.
The best specimen of Bull's historical knowledge is, however, to come. After thus confounding SMOL LETT'S accounts of the treatment of the rebels under GEORGE the First in 1716, and under GEORGE the Second and his brother in 1746, he adds " And it may be, all this was right, and just, and necessary. The Monarch under whose reign it occurred was the gramItilther of our present gracious King ; the victorious Duke of Cumberland was his Majesty's great uncle ;— these therefore are not tales of the olden time, involved in mystery."
Of a truth this is a tale of mystery to us, who had hitherto supposed that his Majesty's grandfather never arrival at the dignity of Monarch, but that he was a certain Eel:Demme Prince of Wales, the son of the one and grandson of the other King above noticed.
There is another tact to which we were, up to last Sunday, strangers, —nimiely, that in some one week of the reign of GEORGE the Second, there were publicly executed for high treason more than one hundred times as many individuals as have been executed by Don MIGUEL. Taking only the ten put to death at Oporto the other day, this ratio gives a thousand beheadings in one week !—Your English history is really "very pretty reading;" and this is a very pretty way of reading Engeish history.
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