After the absolutist government of King Miguel was installed in the country, he was appointed Prosecutor of Lisbon in the Board of Three States (1828), and played a very active role in legitimising King Miguel. During his renowned speech at these Courts, he explained the reasons why, according to the laws of succession and the stipulations of the apocryphal Cortes of Lamego , King Miguel I should be legitimised and Pedro IV considered a usurper, even though they were brothers.

Shortly afterwards, he published his last work, Considerações políticas e comerciais sobre os descobrimentos e possessões dos Portugueses na África e na Ásia [Political and commercial reflections on Portuguese discoveries and possessions in Africa and Asia] (1830) . During the civil war between the liberals and the absolutists (1832-1834), he hastily left Lisbon due to an outbreak of cholera. He lived for some time in Caldas da Rainha, where he wrote Boletim do Exército [ Army Bulletin] for King Miguel, and then returned to Sarzedo ( Arganil ). He died under circumstances that are not entirely clear, on 6 May 1834, alone and abandoned in a hayloft where he had taken refuge from the persecutions carried out against King Miguel's supporters.

In arguing strongly for the cause of King Miguel, José Acúrsio das Neves would refuse to accept the directives of the liberal revolution, and called for a return to the social and political models of the Antigo Regime ( Ancien régime ) while fighting all forms of despotism, even though he recognised the need for force to preserve social order and cohesion. Despite his brilliant political career and his superiority as an economist, decades passed until his work was rediscovered: "A firm believer in the absolutist political ideology, a factious liberal in his economic views, and a strong defender of colonisation, Acúrsio das Neves felt the need — at a time when ideas were paid for with alternating persecutions — to take refuge from the political liberalism (which was then about to become a reality) so that he could survive the dangers of a regime which took so long to define itself and therefore still listened to him, not only accepting his bibliography, but also allowing it to be published in the " Impressão Régia ". However, since history is the best court in which to judge any person, he was forced to die a refugee — from the same liberal system of which he claimed to be a defender economically, but of which he was a fierce ideological opponent" (Luís Marques Alves, "José Acúrsio das Neves, o ' Liberalista ' colonizador ", 1978, pp. 358-359).

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