Note 25 — PORTUGAL. (continued 3)

The personage in question paid dearly for having listened to evil counsellors and exciting the suspicions of the church. In about a twelvemonth after this conversation, the small pox, not attended to so skilfully as it might have been, was suffered to carry him off, and reduced his imperious widow to a mere cipher in the politics of a court she had begun very successfully to agitate. To this period the cruel distress of the queen’s mind may be traced. The conflict between maternal tenderness and what she thought political duty, may be supposed with much greater probability to have produced her fatal derangement, than all the scruples respecting the Aveiro and Tavoura confiscations which the fanatical, interested priest, who succeeded my excellent friend, excited.