THE ROYALIST PRISONERS IN PORTUGAL.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—There remains no hope of the Amnesty Bill now before the Portuguese Parliament being discussed this Session, and so long as the Radical Republicans remain in power there is no hope whatever of a general amnesty being granted. There is thus the prospect that the political prisoners will remain until next year in the Penitenciaria, where many, indeed the
majority of Portuguese Republican; admit that they should not have remained a. single day. Every week that they remain there will certainly weaken the British feeling of friendship towards the Republic, a friendship already shaken by the recent persecutions and by the present Government's cynical and offensive answer to the British protest. It will indeed be curious if those very Republicans who in the past denounced the ancient alliance between Great Britain and Portugal cause that alliance to be denounced in Great Britain Sneers and innuendo have been the reply to the British protest, the authors of which are declared to be enemies of the Republic, enemies of Portugal, Jesuits, and greedy chocolate-makers with an eye on the Portuguese colonies ! These absurd mis-statements have appeared in the official press, which has shown strange ignorance of the British press and of British public opinion, and which has not once admitted that the protest may be due to higher motives.
The most heinous aspect of the case of the political prisoners is that from the beginning the Republic has in word and deed treated the Royalists as criminals. I do not say that it has not treated them worse than criminals are usually treated, but the Radical element (now in power) has professed over and over again to treat them as criminals. That is still the attitude of the Government. The Premier, in his speech in the Chamber of Deputies on April 23rd, said (I quote from the official version), "If it (the Penitenciaria) is, as has been said, a factory of madmen,' this is only a side of a very complex problem which exists in all countries that have the penitentiary system. And it is not surprising that the prisoners go mad, since the penitentiaries contain criminals, abnormal beings, candidates for madness, individuals already evolving towards madness." Surely the high percentage of criminals who have lost their reason in the Lisbon Penitenciaria should in itself have been a sufficient reason not to place political prisoners there. If it is heinous to treat as criminals political opponents arrested as active conspirators, what is to be said of the treatment as criminals of those who have not con- spired at all P It would be difficult to convey to the British public the futility of the charges upon which many innocent persons have been buried in the Penitenciaria. Their worst crime has been indiscretion, more frankness than has been advisable under the Republican regime.
We are told that the conditions in the Penitenciaria have lately been improved. Its director, Dr. Caldeira Queiroz, in a letter to the Portuguese press, has declared that the food is "magnificent," and has also stated that the prisoners receive "books, reviews, flowers, fruits, sweets, &c.," and "receive visitors every week." Considering that the cells are so small that the amount of air does not allow of their being heated, and that at night in neighbouring cells is heard the raving of criminals who have lost their reason since imprisonment, this strikes one very much as though a dentist were to offer chocolates to the sufferer in the dentist's chair. Even if thero were uncontested proofs that the Royalist prisoners were now living in a paradise, still in view of their treatment during the first six months of their imprisornent, when they lived in the very opposite of a paradise, and in view of the fact that even the (moderate) Republicans acknowledge the majority of them to be innocent, the only fair and honourable course for the Republic would be to give them the choice of leaving this paradise. The argument that an amnesty would bring back to Portugal many enemies of the Republic is beside the point, since the amnesty need not include the exiles and 'emigres, and it is probable that many of those at present imprisoned would leave Portugal immediately after their release.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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