truth, that they were not higher than those | gether unworthy of consideration, were it the Queen, on the ground of criminal connection with Struensee, who was himself convicted of high treason for that connec tion. This unhappy princess had been sacrificed, at the age of seventeen, to the brutal caprices of a husband who, if he had been a private man, would have been deemed incapable of the deliberate consent which is essential to marriage. She had early suffered from his violence, though she so far complied with his fancies as to ride with him in male apparel,—an indecorum for which she had been sharply reprehended by her mother, the Princess-Dowager of Wales. in a short interview between them, during a visit which the latter had paid to her brother at Gotha, after an uninterrupted residence of thirty-four years in England. The King had suffered the Russian minister at Copen hagen to treat her with open rudeness; and had disgraced his favourite cousin, the Prince of Hesse, for taking her part. He had never treated her with common civility, till they were reconciled by Struensee, at that period of overflowing good-nature when that minister obtained the recall from banishment of the ungrateful Rantzau. Thus stands the case of the unfortunate Struensee on all the charges but one, as it appears in the accusation which his enemies had such time and power to support, and on the defence made for him under such cruel disadvantages. That he was innocent of the political offences laid to his charge, is rendered highly probable by the Narrative of his Conversion, published soon after his execution by Dr. Munter, a divine of Copen-prehensible. hagen, appointed by the Danish Government A suit for divorce was commenced against to attend him ;* a composition, which bears the strongest marks of the probity and sincerity of the writer, and is a perfect model of the manner in which a person, circumstanced like Struensee, ought to be treated by a kind and considerate minister of religion. Men of all opinions, who peruse this narrative, must own that it is impossible, with more tenderness, to touch the wounds of a sufferer, to reconcile the agitated penitent to himself, to present religion as the consoler, not as the disturber of his dying moments, gently to dispose him to try his own actions by a higher test of morality, to fill his mind with indulgent benevolence towards his fellow-men, and to exalt it to a reverential love of boundless perfection. Dr. Munter deserved the confidence of Struensee, and seems entirely to have won it. The unfortunate man freely owned his private licentiousness, his success in corrupting the principles of the victims of his desires, his rejection not only of religion, but also in theory, though not quite in feeling, of whatever ennobles and elevates the mind in morality, the imprudence and rashness by which he brought ruin on his friends, and plunged his parents in deep affliction, and the ignoble and impure motives of all his public actions, which, in the eye of reason, deprived them of that pretension to virtuous character, to which their outward appearance might seem to entitle them. He felt for his friends with anusual tenderness. Instead of undue concealment from Munter, he is, perhaps, chargeable with betraying to him secrets which were not exclusively his own: but he denies the truth of the political charges against him, more especially those of peculation and falsification of accounts. The evidence against her consisted of a number of circumstances (none of them incapable of an innocent explanation) sworn to by attendants, who had been employed as spies on her conduct. She owned that she had been guilty of much imprudence; but in her dying moments she declared to M. Roques, pastor of the French church at Zell, that she never had been unfaithful to her husband.* It is true, that her own signature affixed to a confession was alleged against her: but if General Falkenskiold was rightly informed (for he has every mark of honest The charges against Brandt would be alto-intention), that signature proves nothing but Reprinted by the late learned and exemplary Mr. Rennell of Kensington. London, 1824. * Communicated by him to M. Secretan on tha 7th of March, 1780. the malice and cruelty of her enemies. | but English lawyers, who ought to be silence! Schack, the counsellor sent to interrogate by the consciousness that the same barbar her at Cronenbourg, was received by her ous disproportion of a penalty to an offence is with indignation when he spoke to her of sanctioned in the like case by their own law. connection with Struensee. When he showed Struensee's confession to her, he artfully intimated that the fallen minister would be subjected to a very cruel death if he was found to have falsely criminated the Queen. "What!" she exclaimed, "do you believe that if I was to confirm this declaration, I should save the life of that unfortunate man ?" Schack answered by a profound bow. The Queen took a pen, wrote the first syllable of her name, and fainted away. Schack completed the signature, and carried away the fatal document in triumph. Caroline Matilda died at Žell about three years after her imprisonment. The last tidings which reached the Princess-Dowager of Wales on her death-bed, was the im prisonment of this ill-fated daughter, which was announced to her in a letter dictated to the King of Denmark by his new masters, and subscribed with his own hand. Twc days before her death, though in a state of agony, she herself wrote a letter to the nominal sovereign, exhorting him to be at least indulgent and lenient towards her daughter. After hearing the news from Copenhagen she scarcely swallowed any nourishment. The intelligence was said to have accelerated her death; but the dreadful malady* under which she suffered, neither needed the cooperation of sorrow, nor was of a nature to be much affected by it. Struensee himself, however, had confessed his intercourse to the Commissioners. It is said that this confession was obtained by threats of torture, facilitated by some hope of life, and influenced by a knowledge that the proceeding against the Queen could not be carried beyond divorce. But his repeated What effects were produced by the inter and deliberate avowals to Dr. Munter do not ference of the British Minister for the Queen? (it must be owned) allow of such an expla--How far the conspirators were influenced nation. Scarcely any supposition favourable by fear of the resentment of King George III.? to this unhappy princess remains, unless it--and, In what degree that monarch himself should be thought likely, that as Dr. Mun- may have acquiesced in the measures finally ter's Narrative was published under the eye adopted towards his sister? are questions of her oppressors, they might have caused which must be answered by the historian the confessions of Struensee to be inserted from other sources than those from which we in it by their own agents, without the con- reason on the present occasion. The only sent-perhaps without the knowledge of legal proceeding ever commenced against Munter; whose subsequent life is so little the Queen was a suit for a divorce, which known, that we cannot determine whether was in form perfectly regular: for in all he ever had the means of exposing the falsi- Protestant countries but England, the offendfication. It must be confessed, that internal ed party is entitled to release from the bands evidence does not favour this hypothesis; of marriage by the ordinary tribunals. It for the passages of the Narrative, which con- is said that two legal questions were then tain the avowals of Struensee, have a striking agitated in Denmark, and "even occasioned appearance of genuineness. If Caroline be- great debates among the Commissioners:trayed her sufferings to Struensee,-if she 1st. Whether the Queen, as a sovereign, was led to a dangerous familiarity with a could be legally tried by her subjects; and, pleasing young man who had rendered es- 2dly, Whether, as a foreign princess, she sential services to her, if mixed motives of was amenable to the law of Denmark?" confidence, gratitude, disgust, and indigna- But it is quite certain on general principles, tion, at last plunged her into an irretrievable (assuming that no Danish law had made their fault, the reasonable and the virtuous will Queen a partaker of the sovereign power, or reserve their abhorrence for the conspirators otherwise expressly exempted her from legal who, for the purposes of their own ambition, responsibility,) that however high in dignity punished her infirmity by ruin, endangered and honour, she was still a subject; and that the succession to the crown, and disgraced as such, she, as well as every other person their country in the eyes of Europe. It is wherever born, resident in Denmark, was, difficult to contain the indignation which during her residence at least, amenable to naturally arises from the reflection, that at the laws of that country. this very time, and with a full knowledge of the fate of the Queen of Denmark, the Royal Marriage Act was passed in England, for the avowed purpose of preventing the only marriages of preference, which a princess, at least, has commonly the opportunity of forming. Of a monarch, who thought so much more of the pretended degradation of his brother than of the cruel misfortunes of his sister, less cannot be said than that he must have had more pride than tenderness. Even the capital punishment of Struensee, for such an offence will be justly condemned by all It was certain that there was little proba bility of hostility from England. Engaged in a contest with the people at home, and dreading the approach of a civil war with America, Lord North was not driven from an inflexible adherence to his pacific system by the Partition of Poland itself. An address for the production of the diplomatic corres pondence respecting the French conques or purchase of Corsica, was moved in the * An affection of the throat which preced the passage of all nourishment.-Eo House of Commons on the 17th of November, | prospects of mankind. None of the un1768, for the purpose of condemning that avowed writings of Mr. Burke, and perhaps unprincipled transaction, and with a view few of his acknowledged ones, exhibit more indirectly to blame the supineness of the visible marks of his hand than the History English ministers respecting it. The motion of Europe in the Annual Register of 1772, was negatived by a majority of 230 to 84, on which opens with a philosophical and elothe same ground as that on which the like quent vindication of the policy which watchmotions respecting Naples and Spain were ed over the balance of power, and with a resisted in 1822 and 1823;-that such pro- prophetic display of the evils which were to posals were too little if war was intended, flow from the renunciation of that policy by and too much if it was not. The weight of France and England, in suffering the parti authority, however, did not coincide with tion of Poland. The little transactions of the power of numbers. Mr. Greenville, the Denmark, which were despised by many as most experienced statesman, and Mr. Burke, a petty and obscure intrigue, and affected the man of greatest genius and wisdom in the majority only as a part of the romance the House, voted in the minority, and argued or tragedy of real life, appeared to the phiin support of the motion. Such,' said the losophical statesman pregnant with melanlatter, was the general zeal for the Corsican, choly instruction. "It has," says he, "been that if the Ministers would withdraw the too hastily and too generally received as an Proclamation issued by Lord Bute's Govern- opinion with the most eminent writers, and ment, forbidding British subjects to assist from them too carelessly received by the the Corsican "rebels," (a measure similar world, that the Northern nations, at all times to our Foreign Enlistment Act), 'private in- and without exception, have been passionate dividuals would supply the brave insurgents admirers of liberty, and tenacious to an exwith sufficient means of defence.' The treme of their rights. A little attention will young Duke of Devonshire, then at Florence, show that this opinion ought to be received had sent 400l. to Corsica, and raised 2000l. with many restrictions. Sweden and Denmore for the same purpose by a subscription mark have, within little more than a century, among the English in Italy.* A Government given absolute demonstration to the contrary; which looked thus passively at such breaches and the vast nation of the Russes, who overof the system of Europe on occasions when spread so great a part of the North, have, the national feeling was favourable to a more at all times, so long as their name has been generous, perhaps a more wise policy, would known, or their acts remembered by history, hardly have been diverted from its course by been incapable of any other than a despotic any indignities or outrages which a foreign government. And notwithstanding the con Government could offer to an individual of tempt in which we hold the Eastern nations, however illustrious rank. Little, however, and the slavish disposition we attribute to as the likelihood of armed interference by them, it may be found, if we make a due England was, the apprehension of it might allowance for the figurative style and manhave been sufficient to enable the more wary ner of the Orientals, that the official papers, of the Danish conspirators to contain the rage public acts, and speeches, at the Courts of of their most furious accomplices. The abi- Petersburgh, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, lity and spirit displayed by Sir Robert Mur- are in as unmanly a strain of servility and ray Keith on behalf of the Queen was soon adulation as those of the most despotic of the after rewarded by his promotion to the em- Asiatic governments." bassy at Vienna, always one of the highest places in English diplomacy. His vigorous remonstrances in some measure compensated for the timidity of his Government; and he powerfully aided the cautious policy of Count Osten, who moderated the passions of his colleagues, though giving the most specious colour to their acts in his official correspondence with foreign Powers. Contemporary observers of enlarged minds considered these events in Denmark not so much as they affected individuals, or were connected with temporary policy, as in the higher light in which they indicated the character of nations, and betrayed the prevalence of dispositions inauspicious to the These particulars are not to be found in the printed debate, which copies the account of this discussion given in the Annual Register by Mr. Burke, written, like his other abstracts of Parliamentary proceedings, with the brevity and reserve, produced by his situation as one of the most in portant parties in the argument, and by the severe notions then prevalent on such publications. It was doubtless an error to class Russia with the Scandinavian nations, merely because they were both comprehended within the same parallels of latitude. The Russians differ from them in race,—a circumstance always to be considered, though more liable to be exaggerated or underrated, than any other which contributes to determine the character of nations. No Sarmatian people has ever been free. The Russians profess a religion, founded on the blindest submission of the understanding, which is, in their mo dern modification of it, directed to their temporal sovereign. They were for ages the slaves of Tartars; the larger part of their dominions is Asiatic; and they were, till lately, with justice, more regarded as an Eastern than as a Western nation. But the nations of Scandinavia were of that Teutonic race, who were the founders of civil liberty: they early embraced the Reformation, which ought to have taught them the duty of exercising reason freely on every subject: and their spirit has never been broken by a foreign yoke. Writing in the year when | cient dignity and their natural rights. Had * despotism was established in Sweden, and 'ts baneful effects so strikingly exhibited in Denmark, Mr. Burke may be excused for comparing these then unhappy countries with those vast regions of Asia which have been the immemorial seat of slavery. The revolution which we have been considering, shows the propriety of the parallel in all its parts. If it only proved that absolute power corrupts the tyrant, there are many too debased to dread it on that account. But it shows him at Copenhagen, as at Ispahan, reduced to personal insignificance, a pageant occasionally exhibited by his ministers, or a tool in their hands, compelled to do whatever suits their purpose, without power to save the life even of a minion, and without security, in cases of extreme violence, for his own. Nothing can more clearly prove that under absolute monarchy, good laws, if they could by a miracle be framed, must always prove utterly vain; that civil cannot exist without political liberty; and that the detestable distinction, lately attempted in this country by the advocates of intolerance, between freedom and political power, never can be allowed in practice without, in the first instance, destroying all securities for good government, and very soon introducing every species of corruption and oppression. The part of Mr. Burke's History, which we have quoted, is followed by a memorable passage which seems, in later times, to have escaped the notice both of his opponents and adherents, and was probably forgotten by himself. After speaking of the final victory of Louis XV. over the French Parliaments, of whom he says, "that their fate seems to be finally decided,f and the few remains of public liberty that were preserved in these illustrious bodies are now no more," he pro- | ceeds to general reflection on the condition and prospects of Europe. "In a word, if we seriously consider the mode of supporting great standing armies, which becomes daily more prevalent, it will appear evident, that nothing less than a convulsion that will shake the globe to its centre, can ever restore the European nations to that liberty by which they were once so much distinguished. The Western world was its seat until another more western was discovered: and that other will probably be its asylum when it is hunted down in every other part of the world. Happy it is that the worst of times may have one refuge left for humanity." it been written after, or at least soon after the event, it might have been blamed as indicating too little indignation against guilt, and compassion for suffering. Even when con sidered as referring to the events of a distant futurity, it may be charged with a pernicious exaggeration, which seems to extenuate revolutionary horrors by representing them as inevitable, and by laying it down falsely that Wisdom and Virtue can find no other road to Liberty. It would, however, be very unjust to charge such a purpose on Mr. Burke, or indeed to impute such a tendency to his desponding anticipations. He certainly appears to have foreseen that the progress of despotism would at length provoke a general and fearful resistance, the event of which, with a wise scepticism, he does not dare to foretel; rather, however, as a fond, and therefore fearful, lover of European liberty, foreboding that she will be driven from her ancient seats, and leave the inhabitants of Europe to be numbered with Asiatic slaves. The fierceness of the struggle he clearly saw, and most distinctly predicts; for he knew that the most furious passions of human nature would be enlisted on both sides. He does not conclude, from this dreadful prospect, that the chance of liberty ought to be relinquished rather than expose a country to the probability or possibility of such a contest; but, on the contrary, very intelligibly declares by the melancholy tone in which he adverts to the expulsion of Liberty, that every evil is to be hazarded for her preser vation. It would be well if his professed adherents would bear in mind, that such is the true doctrine of most of those whom they dread and revile as incendiaries. The friends of freedom only profess that those who have recourse to the only remaining means of preserving or acquiring liberty, are not morally responsible for the evils which may arise in an inevitable combat. The Danish dominions continued to be administered in the name of Christian VII., for the long period of thirty-six years after the deposition of Struensee. The mental incapacity under which he always laboured, was not formally recognised till the associa tion of his son, now King of Denmark, with him in the government. He did not cease to breathe till 1808, after a nominal reign of forty-three years, and an animal existence of near sixty. During the latter part of that period, the real rulers of the country were This passage is not so much a prophecy wise and honest men. It enjoyed a consiof the French Revolution, as a declaration derable interval of prosperity under the adthat without a convulsion as deep and dread-ministration of Bernstorff, whose merit in ful as that great event, the European nations had no chance of being restored to their an This was written in 1826.-Ep. They were re-established four years after wards but as this arose, not from the spirit of the nation, but from the advisers of the young King, who had full power to grant or withhold their restoration, the want of foresight is rather apparent than substantial. forbearing to join the coalition against France in 1793, is greatly enhanced by his personal abhorrence of the Revolution. His adoption of Reverdil's measures of enfranchisemen", sheds the purest glory on his name. of Napoleon had penetrated into the North,The fate of Denmark, after the ambition the iniquity with which she was stripped by Russia of Norway, for adherence to an aĺ fiance which Russia had compelled her to join, and as a compensation to Sweden for Finland, of which Sweden: had been robbed by Russia, are events too familiarly known to be recounted here. She is now no more than a principality, whose arms are still surmounted by a royal crown. A free and popular government, under the same wise administration, might have arrested many of these calamities, and afforded a new proof that the attachment of a people to a government in which they have a palpable interest and a direct share, is the most secure foundation of defensive strength. The political misfortunes of Denmark disprove the commonplace opinion, that all enslaved nations deserve their fate: for the moral and intellectual qualities of the Danes seem to qualify them for the firm and prudent exercise of the privileges of freemen. All those by whom they are well known, commend their courage, honesty, and industry. The information of the labouring classes has made a considerable progress since their enfranchisement. Their literature, like that of the Northern nations, has generally been dependent on that of Germany, with which country they are closely connected in language and religion. In the last half century, they have made persevering efforts to build up a national literature. The resistance of their fleet in 1801, has been the theme of many Danish poets; but we believe that they have been as unsuccessful in their bold competition with Campbell, as their mariners in their gallant contest with Nelson. However, a poor and somewhat secluded country, with a small and dispersed population, which has produced Tycho Brahe, Oehlenschlæger, and Thorwaldsen, must be owned to have contributed her full contingent to the intel lectual greatness of Europe. STATEMENT OF THE CASE OF DONNA MARIA DA GLORIA, AS A CLAIMANT TO THE CROWN OF PORTUGAL.* whose safety would be endangered by every aggrandizement of the House of Bourbon, and who had the power of rapidly succour ing Portugal, without the means of oppressing her independence, was evidently the only state from which friendship and aid, at once effectual, safe, and lasting, could be expected :-hence the alliance between England and Portugal, and the union, closer than can be created by written stipulations, between these two countries. BEFORE the usurpation of Portugal by Philip II. of Spain in 1580, the Portuguese nation, though brilliantly distinguished in arts and arms, and as a commercial and maritime power, in some measure filling up the interval between the decline of Venice and the rise of Holland, had not yet taken a place in the political system of Europe. From the restoration of her independence under the House of Braganza in 1640, to the peace of Utrecht, Spain was her dangerous enemy, and France, the political opponent The peril, however, was suspended during of Spain, was her natural protector. Her re- forty years of the dissolute and unambitious lation to France was reversed as soon as a government of Louis XV. till the year 1761, Bourbon King was seated on the throne of when, by the treaty known under the name Spain. From that moment the union of the of the 'Family Compact,' the Duc de Choiseul two Bourbon monarchies gave her a neigh- may be justly said (to borrow the language bour far more formidable than the Austrian of Roman ambition) to have reduced Spain princes who had slumbered for near a cen- to the form of a province. A separate and fury at the Escurial. It became absolutely secret convention was executed on the same necessary for her safety that she should day (15th of August), by which it was agreed, strengthen herself against this constantly that if England did not make peace with threatening danger by an alliance, which, being founded in a common and permanent interest. might be solid and durable. England, the political antagonist of France, France by the 1st of May, 1762, Spain should then declare war against the former power. The sixth article fully disclosed the magnitude of the danger which, from that moment to this, has hung over the head of Portugal. His Most Faithful Majesty was to be desired to accede to the convention; "it not being |