The Sun.
London, England, 1828-08-08 00:00:00

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE MO-

DERN NERO.

(From the _Liverpool Museum.)

The following sketch of the character of the pre-
sent Usurper of the Portuguese throne, is furnished
expressly for our work, by a gentlemen, who has
long been connected with Portuguese and Brazilian
affairs, and who has already furnished na with sketches
of Rio de Janeiro. He has seen Miguel frequently
and his opportunities of observation, and of informal
tion on the subject, entitle his sketch, though a harsh
one, to be received as authentic.
The career of this infatuated and senseless repro-
bate has been characterised, from his very boyhood
up to the present period, by acts of cruelty, wanton-
ness, and brutality, and a total recklessness of keep-
ing up even an outward appearance of propriety or
common decency. A history of his life would pre-
sent but one continued loathsome scene of depravity
and blackguardism.—Bred up in au unrestrained in-
dulgence ; unchecked in the evil propensities, which
at a very early age began to manifest themselves in
words and actions; caressed and petted by a worth-
less, bigotted, yet doting, mother, from whom he has
inherited most of the detestable passions which
rankle in his heart ; this dubiously legitimate scion
of the House of Braganza became, at the early age
of fifteen years, the terror and scourge of the coun-
try, in the vicinity of the Palace of St. Christovao,
near Rio de Janeiro, where he was brought up.
The associates he selected at that age were of
the same stamp as those he now cherishes about his
person, viz.—stable-boys and lacqueys, and common
street-blackguards and bull-baiters. Drunkenness is
a prominent feature in his character; and, to gratify
this propensity, himself and his bosom companions
laid all the neighbourhood under contributions, by
compelling the landlords to furnish them, gratis, with
whatever quantity of wine or liquor they thought fit
to demand. Any remonstrance against such ras-
cally pranks was generally productive either of
broken limbs or violent assault of the person.
Mutilation of animals to him was a source of ex-
quisite enjoyment; the screams, the convulsive
throes of the poor defenceless animals, whose en-
trails he was tearing out, were to him the most re-
fined pleasure his diabolical imagination could invent.
It is scarcely credible, but he has been known to
steal the fowls in the neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro,
and draw their entrails out, when they were alive,
with a cork-screw. His treatment of his own spe-
cies was equally unfeeling and atrocious. He would
mount a horse; and, prepared with the lasso, or
noosed rope, would, when at full speed—for mere
princely amusement—throw the loop over the head
of a passing negro,and then drag him for many yards
till life was all but extinct. Another of his villainous
practices was, to lay in wait for the negro girls bring-
ing fruit and vegetables to the city; when, not con-
tent with forcibly violating their persons, he would
rob them of their baskets, and give them a severe
beating besides.
In 1821, he returned to Lisbon, along with the
Royal Family of Portugal ; and, in 1823, succeeded,
conjointly with his mother, in overthrowing the
Constitution and dispersing the Cortes. After this,
he fled from Lisbon, accompanied by the troops he
had corrupted, with the intention of stirring up the
Provinces to a revolt,—for the purpose of dethron-
ing his father, and assuming the crown himself. In
this plan he was frustrated, by the vigilance of the
King's party, who succeeded in quashing the insur-
rection in its infancy. One of the King's staunch
adherents, the Marquez de Louie (the father of the
present nobleman of the same title, whose marriage
with one of his, Miguel's, sisters and flight from
Portugal to this country, on the return of the tyrant,
has lately excited so much of the attention of the
public) having made himself, on this occasion, ob-
noxious to Miguel, by his fidelity to his father's
cause, was singled out as a victim on whom to wreak
his vengeance. Miguel himself, assisted by his
lacquey, and the Marquez d'Abrantes, lay in wait
for him, in the palace itself, and after stunning him
with the blows of a hammer, on his temples, stabbed
him through the throat ! For this murder, he was
tried, and found guilty ; but by the intercession of
the King the matter was hushed up. The
lacquey fled, and his other accomplice was banished
the country : he repaired to London, where he
died, of an apoplectic fit, in the beginning of last year.
In 1824, Miguel again made an attempt to wrest
the sceptre from his father's hand. He made him a
Prisoner in the palace ; and would probably have
carried into execution the design he meditated, of
assassination, had not the vigorous measures of the
Foreign Ambassadors averted his infamous purpose,
by effecting the escape of his father, who took re-
fuge on board the Windsor castle, British man-of-
war, then lying in the Tagus.
The King, alarmed at such undisguised proofs of
his son's perfidy, as well as that of the Queen, and
apprehensive of still further machinations against the
security of the throne, resolved to expatriate him,
under the softened name of sending him on his
r b
travels, to acquire a knowledge of foreign customs,
languages, governments, &e.
t rnn t r 311'—er epo
would,bayl
England was appointed to be his first destination :
but hi s aversion
that a sojourn
t o thisseou
front
such
an
was
apprehension
through the medium of its unsilenceable and fearless
press, open the eyes of the English people, and con-
sequently those of the world, to his true character—
that he avowed, rather than come here, he would
throw himself into the Tagus /
To get rid of him—to send him out of Portugal,
to any other country—being the grand object the
King had in view, he was scat, according to his ac-
quiescence, to Austria, where he remained three
years and a half. During that period, he seems not
to have made himself conspicuous by any flagrant
development of his iniquitous character : but rather
to have lain like " a snake in the grass," until an
opportunity offered itself to him to dart forth his
venom.

. -------
During his banishment his father died; the suc-
cession to the throne consequently devolved upon
Don Pedro, the Emperor of the Brazils, Miguel's
eldest brother. Don Pedro, however, abdicated the
throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Donna
Maria da Gloria, whom he betrothed to Don Mi-
guel, and to whom she was to be united after attain-
ing her twelfth year. Until that period should ar-
rive, Don Pedro appointed his sister, Donna Maria
Isabel, as Infanta Regent, who, after a short and
impotent sway, ceded, by his authority, the Regency
to Don Miguel, who returned in the beginning of
the present year, by way of France and England, to
Portugal, wive, in defiance of his brother's confi-
dence, and irk contempt of all justice and equity, he
has now usurped the title of King, and trampled
under foot the liberal and dignified Charter his bro-
ther prepared for that country.
During his short stay in France, his disgraceful
conduct met with a ludicrous, but well-merited chas-
tisement. Whilst in Paris, one very rainy day,
on which the streets were almost deluged with mud
and rain, he went on horseback to a bookseller's
shop, to purchase some political pamphlet, and ob-
serving a number of well-dressed people about the
door, he set his horse a-prancing, which splashed
aiitreo,fat generalhn e rest of the
them over with water and dirt. On their remon-
strating with him, he rode his horse heedlessly
through the midst of them; but was, however, pur-
sued and completely covered with mud from head to
foot.
The reception lie met with in this country, the
attention, the homage (it might almost be added),
which was paid to him, the expences incurred on
his worthless account, is another lamentable example
of the easy disposition and gullibility of John Bull.
extremely
The age of Don Miguel is twenty-five years • he
iscast,
a .sirather t
itaboveso aPortuguese
Braganztt family. It is generally. overcast by a for-
bidden frown ; and its relaxations, which are " few
and far between," exhibit a not less tinamiable }:mile
tlly countenancet(hiiessimiddleini i iasr otfos thet:ht
of forced familiarity and condescension.