Tab ELECTIONS IN PORTUGAL T O the friends of Portugal the
result of the elections of last Sunday is, on the whole, most acceptable. It was feared that the Republicans might win, or, what would have been even worse, might have obtained such an equality at the polls as would have encouraged all the discontented who are prepared to risk a civil war. The result, however, shows that, whatever the dislike for Senhor Franco's Administration, or for the personality of the late King, the body of the people outside Lisbon desire that the Monarchy should continue, and are either friendly to King Manoel personally, or are disposed to wait and see what the result of the change in the occupancy of the throne may be. The majority are probably in the right. The new King has freed them from the tyrannical, though possibly well-intentioned, Premier ; has sought for men who will be acceptable to all the moderate parties, the better Republi- cans included ; and has shown himself entirely free of certain defects which obscured the better qualities of his father, King Carlos. The late King was always in debt, and as he was inclined to pay his debts, he frequently sought increases in his civil allowances. King Manoel, on the other hand, has definitely refused the large increase to his personal income recently granted at the instigation of Senhor Franco and accepted. by King Carlos. To the mass of electors a King's income, unless derived from private property, always seems extravagantly large, the allow- ances even of our own dynasty, though it is by far the poorest in Europe, being often a subject of acrid criticism. King Manoel therefore is popular, and as he appears also to be competent, his position at the head of the State may probably be beneficial. He can choose the seven Ministers who make up the Cabinet in Portugal with a better judgment than a " jobbed " majority can. The great intrigue by which in Portugal, as in Spain, the spoils of office are distributed in a kind of arranged rotation has hitherto prevented anything like true economy, nor is there any ground. for supposing that Republican chiefs would have been less self-seeking or more disposed to insist on a strict control of national expenditure. Republicans spend just as recklessly as Monarchists, and there is no class in Portugal, or, indeed, in Southern Europe, which is able and willing to conduct the affairs of the State without considering its personal gains or the amount of its official incomes. The majority of politicians in Portugal, in Spain, in Italy, and, though in a less degree, even in Austria, are, in fact, pro- fessionals, and look to their own emoluments and dignities as objects of the highest interest. For the rest, they are in ability much of a muchness, with the reservation that the Monarchists wish to conciliate the middle class, while the Republicans are tempted to court the lower strata of the multitude. These facts, which are true about all Southern Europe, are specially true about Portugal, where the mass of the people really belong to three races, two of them rather below the ordinary European standard. The men of the North and Centre of Portugal still retain a trace of the old Visigothic strain, while those of the South are tainted in certain localities with a negro admixture. These latter are, it is alleged, the descendants of slaves imported from Africa to work the great estates of the old nobility. The population of the capital, instead of being the most intelligent in the country, is exceptionally debased, and the agriculturists, who are the best of the whole people, have acquired a habit—probably from hope- lessness—of abstaining from the polls. The moderating influence of a wise King is therefore peculiarly wanted, and there is reason for hoping that the new Monarch may turn out to be the kind of statesman so urgently demanded. He is certainly very young—only eighteen—but he is assisted, perhaps guided, by his mother, of whose capacity there seems to be as little doubt as there is of her courage and readiness to lead.
It is to be hoped that the new Government will devote itself seriously to the development of trade. Portugal can produce many things besides her heavy wines, and any widening in the area of occupation must tend to the development of a middle class, which is now arrested by an evil severely felt in Spain, Italy, and. Portugal,—the tendency of a multitude of the best citizens in each country to seek careers across the Atlantic. It is the energetic who emigrate, and in Italy the number of emigrants is so large that but for their tendency to merge in the resident population they might almost control one or two of the South American States. All ambitious Spaniards swarm out from Spain to Spanish America, while the stronger minded of the Portuguese find in Brazil a home for their energies in which they can flourish. They are, to begin with, willing to work in ways which in the Mother-country they would avoid, and they leave behind them, if not the refuse, at least the most indolent classes of the population. They would, stay if there were profitable careers open and if they stayed they would secure the election of better Parliaments, the appointment of better Judges, and such a purifica- tion of opinion that the Executive would gradually become less self-seeking and more devoted to the per- manent interests of the country. It is a pity that no party has yet arisen seeking to merge Portugal in Spain, and thus to acquire with larger territory and more numerous population broader ideas and more ambitious hopes. There might then be a career for the Peninsula such as General Prim dreamed of when he offered the crown of a reunited Iberia to Ferdinand of Portugal, amidst which the hatred said to exist between the two peoples— as it was supposed to exist between our own Scotch and English lower classes—might, perhaps, be very rapidly soothed away. But this will hardly happen until education has raised the masses a step or two above their present intellectual position. After all, Portugal was once a great maritime Power, while the Spaniards alone among. mankind, have rivalled the British as a colonising force. The races which have stamped themselves so deep into the richest and almost the largest of the continents cannot be wholly wanting in the governing aptitude, while none, not even the French, possess a dominion geographically so well situated, with a soil so rich, a climate so salubrious, and a fortune in minerals so enviable. Neither Spain nor Portugal has in recent years made much impression on the world, but they are beyond external attack ; and while the history of Spain reveals her military strength, that of the Peninsular War shows clearly that if only they were well disciplined and led, the soldiers of Portugal might be made ready to stand side by side with those of any Power in the world. It is not in the country which honours the memory of Wellington that there will be any disposition to detract from the Portuguese soldiers as incapable of successful battle. The instinct which makes the North despise the South rests, in truth, upon little evidence and. no long period of history. Italians once governed the world ; Spaniards conquered and civilised a continent ; and in every part of the Asiatic and African worlds Portuguese were once the successful pioneers. What has happened to them that Northerners, who once dreaded their cunning as well as their courage, should hold them incapable of new careers?
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