On the 27th of December, 1843. the cortes were suddenly suspended by an arbitrary decree of the ministers. It was rumoured that the cabinet would promul gate certain laws by edict, after which the cortes were again to be assembled to pass a bill of indemnity for this act of usurpa tion; and that if the cortes did not pass such bill, they would be dissolved. On the 10th of July, 1844, a decree was pub lished in the Madrid Gazette dissolving the cortes and summoning a new cortes for the 10th of October. They were opened at the appointed time by the queen in person, who on that day com pleted her fourteenth year, and in the speech from the throne some measures of constitutional reform were recommended to their consideration. On the 18th of October a bill for remodelling the consti tution was presented to the congress. This bill proposed to suppress the pre amble to the constitution of 1837, which asserted the national supremacy. The members of the senate were to be abso lutely appointed by the crown for life. The article requiring the cortes to assem ble every year was altered, and it was pro posed that they should be convoked by the crown only when it thought fit. These im portant changes in the constitutional law of the state amounted in fact to a revo lution. It was moreover proposed by this bill that political offences, including those of the press, were not to be sub mitted to the jury.
On the 11th of March, 1845, a new eleo toral law was brought forward in the tortes by the ministry. The qualification of deputies is to be the possession of 12,000 reels (1201.) per annum, from real property, or the payment of 1000 reels (101.) in direct taxes. The qualification for electors is to consist in the payment of 400 reals (41.) per annum, in direct taxes ; but members of the learned pro fessions, retired officers in the army and navy, and persons in the employment of government or in active service, who have a salary of 15,000 reels (1501.) and up wards, are qualified if they pay 200 reels (21.) a year direct taxes. When the number of electors in a district does not amount to one hundred and fifty, that number is to be made up by adding the highest tax-payers. Both deputies and
electors must be twenty-five years of age. The number of persons who pay 400 reels direct taxes is said to be very small in many parts of Spain, and the admission to the electoral franchise of persons in the employment of government with a salary of 150/. a year is calculated to neutralize the independent opinions of the country, and may sometimes have the effect of keeping in power a government adverse to the general interests. By this electoral law the country is to be divided into 306 electoral districts, each to contain about 40,000 inhabitants, and each district will return one member. This is con sidered an improvement upon the plan of returning the deputies by provinces.
The history of the tortes of Portugal is nearly the same as that of those of Spain, only that the towns which sent deputies were comparatively fewer, seldom more than ten or twelve at a time, and the influence of the privileged orders greater in proportion. The nobles having by degrees become courtiers, as in Spain, the kings reigned in fact absolute. In latter times there were less remains of popular freedom observable in Portugal than in Spain. In 1820, while King Joao VI. was in Brazil, a military insurrection broke out in Portugal. and a Constitution was framed in imitation of the Spanish one of 1812, but it soon after upset. For an account of these transactions see Kinsey's Portugal Illustrated, 1828. After the death of King Joao, his son, Don Pedro, gave a charter to Portugal, estab lishing a system of popular representation, with two houses ; this charter was after wards abolished by Don Miguel, and again re-established by Don Pedro ; but some changes have subsequently been made ai it.
The Aragonese, during their period of splendour, extended their representative system by brazos or estamentos to the island of Sardinia, then subject to the crown of Aragon, and the institution, although on a contracted basis, remains to this day in Sardinia under the name of Stamenti, or Estates.