This week the revolution is in Portugal: another change, without
prospect of any more enduring settlement ! What is the reason that a stable government is impossible in Portugal ? It needs no ghost to tell. The statesmen of that country, one and all, whether Liberal, Moderate' or Legitimist, have neglected the first duty of statesmanship—that of organizing the machinery of government in its lesser and more extended ramifications. They seem to have thought, that with constituting a Ministry-, and issuing a charter or a manifesto, their labours ceased ; and that they had nothing to do but to receive taxes, and be lords of the country, as free from actual duties as ministers of state in a stage- play. The consequence is, that there is merely the traditional ex- istence of an official machinery throughout the country: people do carry on public business, but it is rather on sufferance than by any strength of authority. Having no machinery, the Government cannot govern : the late Ministers could not even find money to keep going the business of ruling. Each successive Government has broken down simply by its own utter incapacity—there was literal anarchy, and therefore at every turn there was revolution ; which was in fact the mere overt sign of the normal state of Portugal. Nor has any class in the country thought it worth while to set about the work of supplying the deficiency : one and all, from the court to the camp and the cottage' seem engaged in nothing but intrigues of rivalry. Costa Cabral behaved at first as if he meant to begin a new order of things; but he proved as bad as the rest, only possessing a little more power of command. It is not a " constitution " that Portugal wants, nor a change of the
• monarchy, nor any particular set of ministers, but an apparatus of civil government.
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