a to London, and thence to Portugal, but he chose to perform
the journey by way of Paris, where he saw and conversed both with
Napoleon and Talleyrand. There cannot be the least doubt but that he was
duped by those able men. Many considered him as a traitor. But the
vanity of the Conde, who always said he had gone to judge of these men
by his own eyes, though it makes him weaker, makes him less wicked, and
was, perhaps, the true spring of his actions. He it was who carried the
measures for the detention of the English, the confiscation of their
property, and the shutting the ports against English commerce: adopting,
in short, the whole of the continental system. The very day before Junot
was to reach Lisbon, however, a Paris newspaper, written in anticipation
of the event, announced that "_The House of Braganza no longer
reigned_," and that its members were reduced to the common herd of
ex-princes, &c., giving no very favourable description of them, and
holding out no very flattering expectations for the future. This
completely opened the Prince Regent's eyes, and he consented to that
step, which D. John IV. and Don Jose had contemplated, namely, the
transferring the seat of his empire to his Transatlantic possessions.

This was in the month of November, 1807, but the events of that month,
the most interesting that had occurred to Portugal since the revolution
that had placed Braganza on the throne of his ancestors, will be best
understood by the following extracts from the despatches received by the
British ministry from Lord Strangford and from Sir Sydney Smith at the
time. On the 29th November, 1807, His Lordship writes, after mentioning
the Prince's departure for Brazil:--

"I had frequently and distinctly stated to the cabinet of Lisbon, that
in agreeing not to resent the exclusion of British commerce from the
ports of Portugal, His Majesty had exhausted the means of forbearance;
that in making that concession to the peculiar circumstances of the
Prince Regent's situation, His Majesty had done all that friendship and
the remembrance of ancient alliance could justly require; but that a
single step beyond the line of modified hostility, thus most
reluctantly consented to, must necessarily lead to the extremity of
actual war.

"The Prince Regent, however, suffered himself for a moment to forget
that, in the present state of Europe, no country could be permitted to
be an enemy to England with impunity, and that howev