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The miscellaneous works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh
The miscellaneous works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh Author:James Mackintosh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: STATEMENT OK THE CASE OF DONNA MARIA DA GLORIA, CLAIMANT TO THE CROWN OF PORTUGAL. gonist of France, whose safety would be endangered by every aggran... more »dizement of the House of Bourbon, and who had the power of rapidly succouring 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. The peril, however, was suspended during forty years of the dissolute and unambitious government of Louis XV. till the year 1761, when, by the treaty known under the name of the 'Family Compact,' the Due de Choiseul may be justly said (to borrow the language of Roman ambition) to have reduced Spain to the form of a province. A separate and secret convention was executed on the same day (15th of August), by which it was agreed, that if England did not make peace with 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 just," in the judgment of these royal jurists, " that he should remain a tranquil spectator of the disputes of the two Courts with England, and continue to enrich the enemies of the two Sovereigns, by keeping his ports open to them." The King of Portugal refused to purchase a temporary exemption from attack by a surrender of his independence. The French and Spanish Ministers declared, " that the Portuguese alliance with England, though called ' defensive,' became ...« less