[1822]. Carta de Francisco de Alpoim e Meneses, negociante, para Francisco António Borba, [seu solicitador].

Apology letter from Luís do Rego Barreto, the former governor of Pernambuco, to José da Silva Carvalho, the secretary of justice.

The author apologizes for not accepting the role of spy that the addressee had suggested him in a former letter. He nevertheless suggests the right man to play such role so that the conspiracy against the liberal cabinet will be stopped in time.

In 1822, in the aftermath of the liberal revolution in Portugal, the suspects of a counter-revolutionary coup were prosecuted by the Royal justice. The official version of the coup was described in the 'Diário do Governo' (Cabinet Journal) as the act of «evil anarchists and ambitious conspirators who wanted no less than barbarically cover with blood our happy Regeneration, put our Homeland in mourning, depose the King and take down the House of Deputies ('Cortes')». Five suspects were immediately arrested: Francisco de Alpoim e Meneses, a businessman, Januário da Costa Neves, a knight of the Order of Christ, officer of the Military Ministry of the Army, Manuel Ferreira, a footman, and João Rodrigues da Costa Simões, an apprentice printer.