Matters in Portugal have evidently reached a crisis. An enormous
sum, more than a million, in bonds, has been ab- stracted from the coffers of the Royal railway, and personages of great importance are implicated. The King has dismissed his Ministry and called a new one, consisting of middle-class men, with Senhor Jose Dias Ferreira at their head, and they have promised reductions of the sternest kind in every kind of expenditure, including all salaries, and all payments to internal creditors. They will not attend to politics at all, but will put the Treasury straight by a series of high protective duties. They will also rigorously punish the authors of the recent defalcations, some of whom have already been held to bail in enormous sums. The Army and Navy will also be cut down, and the Colonial expenditure. The public is said to be with the new Ministry, and they may suppress many abases, but they will not put the finances of the King- dom straight without a liquidation, or without selling some of their Colonies. Portugal is ruined by its tradition of being a world-wide Power, whereas it is a humble little State of agriculturists and wine-growers. Eastern Africa is a mere burden to it, and so will Goa be, now that the treaty under which it received £40,000 a year from the Indian Government has been allowed to expire.
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