With the Vintismo period, José Liberato Freire de Carvalho returned to the kingdom, aware that he had contributed greatly to the new order. Elected as a member of parliament and continuing to influence public opinion with his Campeão Português em Lisboa [Portuguese Champion in Lisbon] (1822-1823), he saw the regime eroded by its own contradictions and destroyed following the Vila-Francada . Signing a declaration of protest, along with seventy-eight other representatives of the Sovereign Congress, Liberato became a front-line enemy of the counter-revolution, of the political projects of D. Carlota Joaquina and D. Miguel, the Prince exiled during the Abrilada [Aprilade] (1824), but appointed regent by D. Pedro IV (1827) and acclaimed and sworn in as king in 1828.

In Ensaio político sobre as causas que preparam a usurpação do infante D. Miguel no ano de 1828, e com ela a queda da Carta Constitucional do ano de 1826 [Political essay on the causes leading up to the usurpation of Prince Miguel in 1828, and with it the fall of the Constitutional Charter of 1826] (1840), Liberato took on what can only be understood as the role of a doctrinaire, after having played that of a political journalist. The very title of the book is indicative of a search for the political causes of what, for posterity and for the liberal tradition, will always be known as the Usurpation , thanks to the intervening role of some of the most important theoreticians of liberalism in Portugal, such as – in addition to Liberato himself – Luz Soriano, Herculano , and Garrett.

The author seeks to uncover the roots of this unique and symbolic event in Portuguese history, the Usurpation : he sees it as the culmination of a long tradition of struggle between the true national institutions, reinvigorated by Vintismo (the traditional courts established in Lamego) and their absolutist degeneration . This conflict, in his opinion, was fuelled both externally and internally by expansionism and the constant overt and unofficial interference of the London executives.

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