Star.
London, England, 1821-10-04 00:00:00

us. AU these, Sire, are direct plots against the

plots and machinations conceived, perhaps, in the wretched
clubs of a foreign policy, and seconded by these who have ac-
quired an ascendancy over the meek and docile heart of your
Majesty. Those persons have endeavoured to tear up the Con-
stitution from the Spanish soil, but it is firmly rooted in the
hearts of more than two millions of Spaniards resolute and de-
cided, and can only be rooted out from Spain along with them.
Such measures, Sire, conduct us directly to a revolution which
has not yet begun—to a revolution horrible to name, the epitome
of all the calamities of the human race. Horrible and bloody
would it be, since the Liberales of the year 1821 are not like
those of 1814; and what would be its consequences? We
tremble when we contemplate them ! Revolutions, like tempests,
discharge their power preferably upon the most elevated points.
—What, then, would become of the sacred person of your Ma-
jesty? Who could answer for it then? It is sacred and invio-
lable, Sire; but that inviolability is not like that of the Alps and
Pyrennees. It can only be effective under the shade of law and
order. In a revolution all things are overthrown. In the same
revolution died the just Louis X VI. and the monster Robespierre.
We must speak plainly, Sire, since, perhaps, this is the only time
for doing it. The person of your Majesty is sacred and inviolable;
but as long as that great Charter which secures you that prero-
gative is disregarded, as long as Spain contains one enemy of that
Charter, It behoves you to act as if your inviolability did not
exist. By any other conduct your Majesty will at every step
be surprised, and exposed to a precipice; and what Is worse,
perhaps, ignorance and malevolence will attribute to your Ma-
jesty the plots of foreigners.
" Far, Sire, from your Petitioners be the idea that your Ma-
jesty can be the least involved in these plots ; but, Sire, you are
the image, and there will not be writing ignorant men who will
Impute to you the faults of your Priests, as thousands have im-
puted to our holy religion the vices of which they themselves
were guilty. Preserve, therefore, your precious life. Preserve
the vessel of the State which is on the point of foundering. Be
a King for once. Place yourself at the head of that great nation
which, loving your Majesty with the greatest affection, deserves
in return the peace and the happiness for which it sighs.
" By not enjoying those blessings at present, its members
tremble and threaten a complete dissolution: by not having en-
joyed them in the year 1814, you were made to appear a horrible
monster of ingratitude ; by not having enjoyed them for the last
6i: yearn, you have been the object of attack among foreignerl
and of compassion among the sound part of your own subjects;
and, finally, by not now enjoying them, you appear under con-
straint while performing an act the greatest, the most spontane-
ous, and the most worthy of your magnanimous heart. Be a
Kin, Sire, we repeat, and while the greatest and the best of
men desire not to play the least part in the history of Kings.
" Condescend, Sire, to accede to the wishes of your faithful
subjects, who thus supplicate you, and who incessantly pray to
the ALMIGHTY to preserve the life of your Majesty through a
long course of years for the good of the Monarchy.
" Valladolid, September 12,1821."
[Then follow the signatures of the individuals composing the
Patriotic Club, ant many of their fellow-citizens.]

(Flom the " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," in the
last Number of the London ifiaazine.)
I now pass to what is the main subject of these
latter confessions, to the history and journal of what
took place in my dreams; for these were the imme-
diate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change
going on in this part of my physical economy, was
from the re-awakening of a state of eye generally in-
cident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability.
I know not whether my reader is aware that many
children, perhaps most, have a power of. painting,
as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms;
in some, that power is simply a mechanic affection
of the eye; others have a voluntary, or a semi-vo-
luntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as
a child once said to me when I questioned him on
this matter, " I can tell them to go, and they go;
hut sometimes they come, when I don't tell them to
come: Whereupon I told him that he had almost
as unlimited a command over apparitions, as a Ro-
man centurion over his soldiers.

In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this
faculty became positively distressing to rue : at night,
when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed
along in mournful pomp ; friezes of never-ending
storks, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn
as if. they were stories drawn from times before CEdi-
pus or Priam—before Tyre—before Memphis. And,
at the same time, a corresponding change took place
in my dreams ; a theatre. seemed suddenly opened
and lighted up within my brain, which presented
nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour.—
And the four following facts may be mentioned, as
noticeable at this time :.

1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased,
a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and
the dreaming states cf the brain in• one point—that
whatsoever 1 happened to call up and to trace by a
voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to
transfer itself to my dreams ; su that I feared to
exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things
to gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his
human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being
visually represented I did but think of •in the dark-
ness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms
of the eye ; and, by a process apparently no less inevi-
table, when thus once traced in faint and visionary
colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were
• drawn out by the tierce chemistry of my dreams,
into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. For this, and all other changes in my dreams,
were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy
melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by
words. I seemed every night to descend, not meta-
phorically, but literally to descend, into chasms ani
sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it
seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor
did I, by waking, feel that I had re,ascended. This
I do not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom
which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting
at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despon-
dency,• cannot be approached by words.
3. The sense of space, and in the end, the sense
of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings,
landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast
as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space
swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutter-
able infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so
much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes
seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one
night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a
millenium passed in that time, or, however, of a dura-
tion far beyond the limits of any human experience.

4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or for-
gotten scenes of later years, were often revived : I
could not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been
told of them when waking; I should not have been
able to acknowledge them as parts of my past expe-
rience. But placed as they were before me, in
dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their eva-
nescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I
recognized them instantaneously. I was once told
by a near relative of mine, that having in her child-
hood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge
of death but for the critical assistance which reached
her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its mi-
nutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously
as in a mirror ; and she had a faculty developed as
suddenly for comprehending the whole and every
part. This, from some opium experiences-of mine, I
can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same thing as-
serted twice in modern books, and accompanied by
a remark which I am convinced is true, viz. that the
dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of,
is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of
this at least, I feel assured, that there is no. such
thing as forgetting possible to the mind ; a thousand
accidents may, and will interpoe a veil between our
present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on
the mind ; accidents of the same sort will also rend
away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled,
the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars
seam to withdraw before the common light of day,
whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light
which is drawn over them as a veil—and that they
' are ivaiting to be revealed when the obscuring day.
light shall have withdrawn.

AMERICAN EivEts.—Dr. RANDALL and Lieutenant
HULL, both of the Army, have fought a duel at
Pensacola. The latter was shot through the body,
and died in a few hoots. On the 7th of August, a'
duel was fought at Baton Rouge, between F. L.
AMELUNG, Esq. Sheriff, and Captain JONES, of the
United States Army, in which the tnrmer fell. The
ball fairly blew out his brains, and he may be said to
have died,on the spot, although lie breathed for the
space of nearly three hours after he was shot. His
adversary received no injury. The distance was only
five steps. •

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-LONDON.
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71-IHE EVENING STAR.

THURSDAY, 'OCTOBER 4, 1821.
PRICES OF STOCKS THIS DAT AT 01111 O'CLOCK :
3 per Cent. Consols 77 7636 7714
5 per Ct. 10934 110—India Stock 235
India Bonds 645. 665. pre.—Esch. Bills 2s. 3s. pr.
Do. Small 2s. 4s. pr.—. Cons. for Acct. 77 A 14 %.

We have received to-day Papers direct from
Madrid, to the 20th ult. The leading part of their
contents is of a nature particularly interesting to this
country. The British Ambassador at Madrid has
been under the necessity of complaining to the Spa-
nish Government of a very gross libel, which recently
appeared in one of the Spanish Journals, on his Ma-
jesty GIORGZ IV. The Government referred his
Excellency to the regular Tribunals ; but on present-
ing his complaint before the Jury of Accusation—an'
institution equivalent to that of the Grand Jury with
us, they found that there was no ground for prose-
cution—in other words, they threw out the Bill. We
subjoin the particulars of this affair, with the apology
which one of the Journals thinks it necessary to offer
for the decision of the Jury. The writer remarks
truly, that however entitled to respect the verdict of
a Jury may be, it cannot alter the nature of things;
it cannot make that innocent and harmless, which is
as foul a calumny as probably ever was penned :

MADRID, SEPTEMBRR 17.
Two verdicts have lately been given by Juries
which may serve to give a sufficient idea how far
this institution is applicable to our customs and to
the state of our civilization. One of these is at the
instance of the Ambassador of his Britannic Majesty,
and the second at the instance of Don Sebastian Mi-
nano : in both cases it was decided that there was
no ground for proceeding to trial. The Bill was
thrown out.—Our readers will be glad to know the
grounds of the two actions, that they may form their
own 'opinion of the justice of the declaration of the
Jury in both cases.
The English Ambassador denounced an article in
the Regulator, a French Paper printed at Madrid,
conceived in the following terms It is affirmed,
that George IV. will marry again within six months.
This news can excite no surprise, since there are per.
sons to whom all crimes are permitted; and who,
though the object of general execration, nevertheless
enjoy all the favours of fortune, unless, indeed, their
femme torments them every hour and every minute,
and does not permit them to enjoy the fruits of their
misdeeds."
The Ambassador considered this Article as an in-
link to his Sovereign, the King of Great Britain-
The Jury has declared unanimously that it is not I
Don Sebastian Minano denounced about the same
time, a pamphlet entitled a The Life, Virtues, and
Miracles of the poor Vagabond, otherwise the Au-
thor of ' Las Seniblanzas; or M. Abbe Minano."
Many well-informed and sensible persons thought
k *as impossible to pour forth more abuse on an in-
dividual than is printed in the denounced pamphlet ;
that it attacked in the most horrible manner the pri•
vote life of the complainant, against whom the
blackest and most abominable calumnies were uttered.
The Jury, however, were not of this opinion, and
consequently declared there was no ground for action.
When the law speaks, good citizens must conform
to its decision ; but this duty, which is one of the
first safeguards of social order, does not deprive
them of the right of making temperate and respect-
ful observations on the inconveniencies . which may
result from such a system of judgments.
The Jury certainly owe to no one an atcontlt of
their conduct : they decide according to their convic-
ting, and this we know is produced on every man in
different ways and by different motives; but, if the,
simultaneous conviction of twelve men, or of seven
among them, is always sufficient to acquit a person
accused, it certainly is not sufficient to change the
nature of a thing, and to make that cease to be an
insult which casts a stain over the reputation of an
individual. The laws of all countries, and general
opinion, have determined, irrevocably, the nature of
what is called insult (injscria) and it would be in
vin for an hundred tribunals to declare that not to
be an insult which all the world knows to be one ;
their decision, though it claims respect and reverence,
cannot change the opinion formed of this kind of
offence, on which all persons will continue to believe

what they ought.
If it were possible that the Tribunals shoold fre-
'fluently pass sentences opposed to the public opinion,
there is no doubt that one of those bonds Would be
broken which most strongly bind men in society,
which is, confidence in the protection of the laws;
for as far as the salutary habit of obeying and re-
specting the decision of the Tribunals has, been con-
tracted, so far, it is presumed, they are dictated
by the principles of eternal and invariable justice
consigned in those rules of public conduct to which
we give the name of laws. Those rules must be
such that their propriety and justice may be evident
to the majority, whose opinions cannot then fail to
be in harmony with what they (the laws) establish ;
whence it follows, that as soon as they are not so,
either there is a defect in the law or error in the
minds of the people; in both cases justice cannot be
administered as the wants of society require, and a

confbsion and disorder ensue which must neceuanly
be a serious detriment to the common interest. (The,
writer then proceeds to observe, that such evils fre-
quently occur in times of revolution, Judges fre-
quently deciding according as they are influenced by
party opinions," whence, (says he) it will result that
an accused person will be condemned or acquitted,
according to the spirit prevailing in the Jury. that is,
it is possible that in such bodies, sometimes the safe-
guards of innocence may disappear and the proba-
bnities of triumph be multiplied in favour of guilt.")

CADIZ, SEPTEMBER to.
The Board of Health found in its Sitting yester-
day, by the daily reports of the municipal officers of
this port, that the health of this capital is in the most
perfect condition, no change being observed which

Ay excite uneasiness on this important subject.
The same flattering respect is offered by the state
of Xeres la Frantera: the persons secluded from
communication in CArtuja, after being strictly and
vigilantly observed, have been permitted to return to
their homes, as not the slightest ground of suspicion
appeared. Same persons having suspicious symp-
toms in Port St. Mary, a strict investigation box been
made, which :hews that they are afflicted with die.
orders usual at this season of the year.
BARCELONA, SEPTEMBER 11.

II