reduction of public credit...". Portugal's neighbor Spain, during its resistance to the Napoleonic invasions, had approved a liberal Constitution when King Ferdinand VII was in exile, but it was quickly abrogated on his return, and he reigned as absolute monarch. The Spanish model also served as an example for the Portuguese: a popular uprising in the provinces against absolutism forced the Spanish monarch to reinstate the 1820 Constitutional monarchy. The significance of events in Spain was not lost on a small group of politically like-minded bourgeoisie in Porto; two years earlier, Manuel Fernandes Tomás, José Ferreira Borges, José da Silva Carvalho and João Ferreira Viana had founded the Sinédrio, a clandestine liberal group who debated the political evolution of Spain and Portugal and would influence subsequent events. The Sinédrio's members were a mixture of merchants, property-owners, the military and noblemen, whose liberalism was based not on personal economic circumstances but on their exposure to international literature and philosophies at university or in the masonic lodges. The common people were rural, almost totally illiterate and lived in a culture of tradition and religion guided by the clergy. The ideological differences between the doctrinairism of the liberal movement and the dogmas of religion would bring the two groups into conflict eventually. In the meantime, however, the rhetoric of the liberal intellectuals had influenced those soldiers in the northern garrisons who on 24 August 1820, first proclaimed in Porto a revolution against the absolute monarchy of Portugal. A colonel read out the declaration: "Let's join our brothers-in-arms to organize a provisional government that will call on the Cortes to draw-up a Constitution, whose absence is the origin of all our ills." The Regency in Lisbon attempted to gather forces to oppose the revolt, but on 15 September they too joined the movement. The administration of William Beresford was swiftly replaced by a Provisional Junta, and the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Cortes of the Portuguese Nation", whose deputies were chosen by indirect election, was summoned on 1 January 1821 to draft a written Constitution. This constitutional assembly was composed of diplomatic functionaries, merchants, agrarian burghers, and university-educated representatives who were usually lawyers. Most of all these were ideological romantics, later referred to as Vintistas for their audacious radicalism. State censorship of the press and literary productions was lifted, and the Portuguese Inquisition was extinguished; a general amnesty for those involved in anti-liberal movements was