CALORARDE, FRANCISCO TADEO. the leading minister of the Speeds &Awe for ten years ender Ferdinand VII., was born at the tows el val.', in Lower Aragon, on the 10th of February 1773. Ills parents were so poor, that when he bream. a student of law at the isslrerilly tiaregvem be was obliged to eke out his means of sub by olleisting in off boars as a lady's page. A story is told in his U., by Caniessa, that one evening some merchants of Teruel, who learned that the page who was carrying the lantern to light them to hie mistreses reusing party was stodyleg the law, asked him what he aimed at beeeedng; and that the youth replied, with much gravity, "Ilisieter of gran and justice: This was considered so preposterous, that It was repented maid roars of laughter at the party, and served as a weed* jest aiaiwet Calomattle, more especially as his abilities as • student were far from remarkable. But when he removed to Madrid to prints* as • lawyer, the young Aragonese soon found a path to fortune by marrying the daughter of Beltran, another Ala goas% the physician to Gedoy, then in the zenith of his power as the reign* favourite, and though in the course of a few months he parted with Lis wife for ever, he remained fixed in the office to which his father-in-6w had introduced him. The French invasion drove dins to Cadiz ; and his rejection as a candidate for the first Cortes is call to have turned him from an adherent of the liberal into one of the elnedutist party. Through the stormy years that followed be was sometime In rawer in inferior office., and sometimes in banishment and disgrace, till, on the fall of the constitutional government by the neat= of the Duke of Angonleme, and the restoration of absolute power under Ferdinand, Calomarde finally attained his object, and was named is 1623 to the post he bad aspired to in boyhood, iu suc ovation to the Marquis of Cam Irujo, whose death proved a serious less to Spain. It was while Calomarde was minister of grace and peek', that, on the 31st of July 1826, an unhappy schoolmaster named Antonio RINIl war executed at Valencia for denying the Trinity and other leading doctrine. of the church—the only fee the last thirty years in Spain. The disgrace of most of the meg mem of the paried, from 1623 to 1833, which was a period of marked retregresidon in every point of view, belongs to Ferdinand and Cabe rnet& ; but it is not easy to decide in what proportions, as it is assisted ty some that the minister was merely an obsequious tool— by other., that be often prompted the malignant pensions of the king. His principal can appears to have been to keep himself in place, and to promote aa many Aragonese as possible, a propensity which was the subject of Ferdinand's frequent sarcasm. Ili. long term of power ammo to an end with an event which was not only a crisis In the life of Calomarde, but • most momentous crisis in the history of Spain. King Ferdinand had revived In favour of his daughter by Queen Christina, the present Queen Isabella, the law which allowed of the female) isherliann of the crown—a law which bad been abolished by treaty whh foreign powers at the pesos of Utrecht, but secretly agreed to be maimed by king and cotter towards the close of the 18th century. In
Septeteler 1633, when the king considered himself on his death-bed, his naiad was agitated by the thought of the probable consequences of this arrangement, which deprived his brother Don Carlos, the favourite of the absolutists, of the succession to the throne. He asked the whin of Calemerde, who told him that the royalist volunteers, the eupportere of the absolute party, had arms in their hands, that they swebercal 200,000 men, and that It was useless to expect they would oessent to ass the succession altered without a civil war, which would very probably bring on the total destruction of the opposite party. Ti.. Queen Christina herself was brought to assent to this Orr at things; and the king caused a document to he drawn up in the nature of • oodicil to his will, which retired the male line of esecoesioe, but he strictly commanded that it should be kept entirely *omit till after his death. The next day the king was seized with a Wham, sal lay insensihie for many bouts, nor was it supposed by Um that he would ever recover. Impatient to worship the rising sen,Calomarele communicated the contents of the important document to lion Carlo., and crowds flocked to the palace of the feisty to secures their future fortunes; the momentous intelligence dream public, and roused all the apprehensions of the liberals of Madrid. The queen*s alder, the Trim:eye Lulea Carlota of Naples, wife of the king', brother Don Francisco, was a woman of strong passions sad mescaline mated= she hurried to the palace of San lidefeesso, where rarer/mod was lying, now recovering from his lethargy, eimanneseet Calemards to her presence, reproached him with Lie treachery, and told him not to fatter himself that his baseness would nape Its deserved chastisement. The princess next sent for the codicil and tore It to pieces with her own hands. When this could be dose with impunity, Calomarde might augur abet he had to ex pert : be secretly left the palace, was concealed for come days in Iladrid, tins took refuge in • ocenesnt, and finally made his way in &vole. to the froutiers, pursue! by officers with the king's orders for his confinement ha the citadel of Siloam. A sergeant and party of toiler? welted him on the border of France, hut were prevailed upon with the promise of a sum of money to let him pus, for which they were afterward. dismissed the service In disgrace. Calomarde's exertions in Don Carlos's cause failed to procure him the favour of Don Carlos When, after the death of Ferdinand, the civil war broke out in the Basque provinces, he quitted France to offer hia services at the headquarters of the Pretender, he was refused even an interview, it I. supposed from resentment at his weakness in allowing himself to be too easily defeated. With the exception of a visit to Rome, the rest. of his life was 'pent in Franco, chiefly at Toulouse, where his very liberal charities to all his countrymen earned him the title of Father of the Spaniards, and where, after some years of dejection, be died on the 21st of Jane 1842, regretted by none but the recipients of hie bounty.