New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-06-27
Portugal.

No country in Europe has more favorable
position, soil and climate none Is IN more
desperate condition. The causes which
have produced this are mainly such as we
in the New World are free from but among
them are some which we may ponder with
profit to ourselves.
Nature has been bountiful to Portugal.
It might grow and export grain IN large
quantities, but for centuries its people ate.
foreign bread in 1899, for the first time,
little corn was exported from Lisbon In
1929, Kinley, an English traveller, says that
the supply of potatoes was every year OBJ
tanned from England and Ireland; 1t Is
well adapted for grazing and wool growing,
but its peasantry never taste meat; Its
mountains are rich in iron, copper, tin, lead,
silver, but no mines are opened, and for
utensils of iron and copper it depends on
England it has every advantage for man
ufacturing, but no factories there are no
roads. no bridges and no schools, and when
pany proposed to render the Tagus naviga-
bic into the interior, the Government replied
that if God had wanted it so He would have
made it so, and that to change 1t would be
to oppose His will the population, which
in the beginning of the sixteenth century
! exceeded four millions, cannot now be est
mated above three millions and a half; in
l94l, out Of the entire population but 81, 1880
persons went to any sort of school; assas-
snations and robberies abound more than in
any other country the officers of the Gov
eminent plumber more Justify than else
where in 1876 some five hundred clOs-
ters were shut up and their estates cOnfsca
ted, Welding a vast sum of money, but the
greater part of it was absorbed on its way
to the Treasury the public debt in 1914
was $1,000, 600, and how much it has since
increased we know not, but it is safe to sup
poso a million year, the revenue never
paws the expenses of the Government.
With all these facts in view, is it surprising
that the country should be unquiet, revolu
tiouary, and manifest all the symptoms of
social dissolution
The prosperity of Portugal eliminated
under Emanuel the Great at the end of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth cen
turv. Then the Kingdom controlled the
commerce of the Indies and of Brazil, and
Lisbon was the market whence the North of
Europe obtained its supplies of Eastern and
Western tropical products. But this period
of splendOr had no interior basis the king
dom traded, but did not produce. Its ener-
gies were devoted to foreign aggrandize-
ment, not internal Improvement. With no
home industry to employ and feed It's peo
pie, they naturally sought in boundless diffu-
sion, through vast and distant colonies that
wealth and power which can only be ac-
CURED by concentrated and Industrious
population. OF course the end of such
system could only be ruin and decay, which
must at last overtake like fate every nation
/ which devotes itself to trading in the pro-
ducts of others, instead of its own.
We have here no space to follow out the
various epochs in the downfall of Portuguese
/ Commerce, The most fatal blow struck at
the life of the nation was the Methuen trea-
ty, negotiated in 1903, with England. BY
this England agreed to receive Portuguese
wines at less duty than those of any other
nation, in return for which British manufac-
lures were 10 have exclusive privileges of
admission into Portugal. In other words,
I the two countries agreed IL make a trial of
+ Free Trade Whether the result has been
advantageous To England we will not here
/ inquire, but il is certain that it has been i'm
measurably disastrous to Portugal
But these are far from the only causes
which have excluded Portugal from the in
dustrial and progressive movement of mod
ern nations. That movement has appeared
in countries where the Protestant spirit has
been predominant Portugal has been ex-
clusively Catholic. The Jesuits have
governed and the lnquisition had great
power over her people Hence it is that
industry, internal Improvements, commerce
and popular education have not been called
iGio existence.
The attempt has, however, been made TO
reform the country. The Great MARQUIS"
as the common people still call him, POM
BAL devoted to it an iron will, sleepless
energies, and absolute power. Forty years
after the kingdom had become a British de-
nendencN he detarninnA L. caS. OF -. L..