ease the
absolutists as much as the friends of constitutional government? No
sooner had the news of his father's death reached Peter at Rio Janeiro,
than he issued a charter of 145 clauses, conferring a constitution on
Portugal. This constitution which was destined to alternate for nearly a
generation with absolute monarchy or with the revolutionary constitution
of 1821, had the advantage of being the voluntary gift of the king. It
was, however, composed in great haste, and, except that it retained the
hereditary nobility as a first chamber in the cortes, was almost
identical with the constitution established in Brazil in the previous
December. Among other provisions it subjected the nobility to taxation
and asserted the principle of religious toleration. A few days later, on
the 2nd of May, King Peter executed an act of abdication in favour of
his daughter Maria, providing, however, that the abdication should not
come into effect until the necessary oaths had been taken to the new
constitution and until the new queen should have been married to her
uncle, Dom Miguel.

[Pageheading: _CIVIL WAR IN PORTUGAL._]

This compromise pleased nobody. It is true that it seemed to make
permanent the separation of Brazil from Portugal, since the former state
was destined for Peter's infant son, afterwards Peter II.; but the
Brazilian patriots would have preferred a more definite abandonment of
the Portuguese throne, and Peter's half-measure of abdication was one of
the main causes of the discontent which drove him to resign the
Brazilian crown five years later. The Portuguese liberals were alarmed
at the prospect of a restoration of Dom Miguel to power, while the
absolutists were indignant at the imposition of a constitution. From the
very first it encountered opposition. The new constitution was indeed
proclaimed on July 13, and the necessary oaths were taken on the 31st.
But on the same day a party, consisting mainly of Portuguese deserters
in Spanish territory, proclaimed Miguel as king and the queen-mother as
regent during his absence. Miguel, however, gave no open support to this
party; on October 4 he actually took the oath to the new constitution,
and on the 29th he formally betrothed himself at Vienna to the future
Queen of Portugal. But the Portuguese insurgents were not deterred by
the apparent defection of the prince whose claim to reign they
asserted, and they received a thinly disguised encouragement from the
Spanish