PORTUGUESE RULE.
[To Tall EDITOR OF TRH " Sracraroa."] SIB,—The following extract from a letter from Lorengo Marquez may be of interest to you. The writer is a public school and university man whom I have known since we were
at school together.
Our Governor-General was appointed by one section of Republicans, and the other section is now in power, su the whole effert of the Cabinet at Lisbon is devoted to making his rule here a failure, and we have to suffer for it. Affairs in Lisbon, I gather, are -awful—a man need only say that the Kingdom managed things as well ai the Republic is doing to be clapped in prison -without any trial. Freedom means merely freedom to praise those in power : dungeons considered too insanitary for murderers or thieves are quite good enough for a man whose only crime is that his grandfather was in the royal service. Here the natives are dying by hundreds from starvation, and there seems every prospect of a worse harvest this year than last. The Government is at last making a move in the matter of public works, but then most of the money voted will be absorbed by the various officials through whose hands it passes. The Douglas trial drags on ; the only new point is that the Portuguese are claiming £2,000 from the Universities' Mission for ' armed invasion' ; the only evidence of arms is that one man produced a revolver to quiet some of the mission boys who were getting excited and threatened a breach of the peace."
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