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: