Kentucky Gazette

Mercure de France.

MADRID, Aug. 13.

Definitive Suppression of all the Monks in all Spain,

Don Joseph Napoleon decrees, that all the regular monastic and mendicant orders which exist in all the Spanish possessions, are suppressed; and within fifteen days from the publication of the present decree, the individuals of such orders, are to leave their convents, and are to take the ecclesiastical secular dress. They shall withdraw to the places where they were born, and there they shall receive individually from the treasury of the provincial revenues, the pension determined by the decree of the 17th April last. The ministers of the ecclesiastical affairs of the interior, and of the finances, shall take the necessary measures to secure the recovery of all the property of the convents, which shall remain to the nation, according to the destination already prescribed. All ecclesiastical persons without any distinction of orders, shall be promoted to the curacies and other dignities. They shall enjoy all the advantages of the clergy in virtue of their fitness, merit & conduct.

The charitable schools shall be maintained, and the government shall take speedy measures to promote the interests of these benevolent institutions.

Fifty millions of reals are put to the disposition of the minister of the interior to indemnify all the inhabitants who have suffered the calamities of the war, and fifty more at the disposal of the minister of war to recompense those who have distinguished themselves by their courage and fidelity.

Another decree of the 18th, ordains, that many grandees of Spain and dignitaries of the kingdom having betrayed the confidence the king had put in them, and violated the oaths they had made to him, his majesty shall not henceforward acknowledge any other grandees or titled persons, but those he shall designate by a special decree; those who are in possession of a title may solicit the continuation of it; but until they have obtained it, they cannot use it in any act or contract.