The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-18

tertanmentS, but the press has con vinced 1t. They have great moral and | material advantages" one scribe in formed the public. As a spectacle they | stimulate to encourage, and also dis tract the mind from reilecting upon the | misery of life. The writer was serious, | too. Yet we all know that Portugal | can breed brave men without the aid of | fighting bantams, and no country in l Europe is more beautiful in landscape | and more balmy In its climate.
 The other evening, while l was ad- miring the gas-outlined caravel of Da Cana on the front of Oporto's town hall, I heard a furtive whisper of Beef! Beef" It came from youth in high collar, who promenaded arm-in- arm with his chums on the waving pavement of the praca. It was meant to be an insult. But there was nothing more of it than that, and the lad looked elsewhere when he caught my eye. am told that the occurrence is not new. It is not that Portugal has any particu- lar reason for hating us, but she cannot help having quick fits of jealousy when she realizes how rich we are and how poor she is, and how we become twice as rich even as we are when we bring our pounds sterling into Portugal and receive more than eight thousand reis apiece for them, instead of the par val ue of 4,500 reis.
 The government is, of course, rotten. It has been so almost from time imme- morial To northerner it is mysteri- ous how four million people who are not towards Gin spite of the cockfight l 1pyoY,'c ipn pl e,1hy,,it ata llU 1 to be robbed and harassed. But the | southern temperament has to be con- | sidered Further, more than two- l thirds of the Portuguese are illiterate. The bulk of the population are agricul- l turists, who have no time to spare for sedition; they must be in the fields from sunrise to sunset every working day if they are to pay their taxes and | live. And, chief thing of all, and fact
 much lamented openly in Oporto, where they air their thoughts with extreme l freedom, there is not man in Portugal
 willing, and therefore able, to head a revolution. Otherwise
 And yet no one has a bad word for the king, or aught but good one for
 the queen. As a constitutional mon
 arch, Dom Pedro has fair excuse for not interfering with his precious cabi- net, who are supposed to represent the
 nation. They do not represent it, but they have made fine study of the art
 of retaining the power they have so long misused. It has been said recent ly that "only cynical and immoral
 country would continue in such state of torpidity." But the churches fill in Portugal, nor is cynicism usually the
 offspring of illiteracy. And to the i stranger it seems that Portugal treats him with an honesty reaching to the
 verge of simplicity
 On one achievement of late the gov- ernment may be congratulated for it's
 own sake, if not PortugaPs. It bought
 wheat largely before the rise in price.
 One sees on the walls In small towns
 the following notice: This is to inti-
 mate that the local authorities have a deposit of 'farinhas' of the first, the
 second and the third qualities, to avoid
 an increase in the price of bread y
 Such slight scarcity as did exist was
 met not by an increase in price, but a
 reduction in the size of the loaves.
 Conceivably enough, a thirty per cent.
 rise on bread would have discovered a
 leader for the revolutionists of Oporto.
 The phrase "falta de dinheiro" rings
 in ones ears in Portugal. In honor of
 the discovery of India, certain Brazil
 ian friends subscribed a sum to buy a
 cruiser for the Tagus. At par the mon
 ey would have been enough. But with
 gold at it's present price it is not nearly
 enough. It is now suggested, not un-
 wisely. that mere torpedo destroyer
 be bought instead of a cruiser. The
 role of so poor a country must be limi-
 ted to the defensive.
 So, too, with that stately harbor of
 Leixoes by Oporto. At great cost a
 granite hill of the interior has beer
 pulled to pieces to construct this har-
 bor. Last December, however, a south
 westerly gale actually preached it's pro- digious wall. The breach still exists
 A certain cheap idea of tinkering il
 prevails, but all experts aver that this
 will be useless, and that if the task be
 not grave danger of the complete wrecl , of the magnificent inclosure. Want o1 money" is pleaded in ecuse of this post ponement of a national duty. Si2
 months hence big steamers may have $ to fight shy of Leixoes.
 , At Bussaco there is a famous convent , in the woods. Wellington made it hi: , headquarters when he had his eye or | Massena before the battle. Until { short time ago it was state property , and for it's superb architecture it de , serves always to be under state protec , ton. But for want of money the stat
 allowed it to pass into the hands O ' some hotel proprietors. At the presen I lmoment the stone-masons are dressing !, its majestic exterior and it's interior il f lbeing cut up into bedrooms with view
 from the windows of extraordinar. a beauty. It is to be a grand hotel o r course--the notice boards say so. Ye no on believes it will ever come to ma turity and be haunted by swallow t tailed polyglot walters. The hotel ITO
 motors, like the government, fin q themselves short of money.
 = In the local factories women work al f day for fourpence of Portuguese cur " rency, which you or I could buy for a trifle more than tWopence; and the Bri ton at large in the land need pay Il g more than two shillings and sixpence I day to be lodged and well fed at high class hotels. It is only in Lisbon an h Oporto that the shopkeepers seem abl = to cope with this problem of the gic . and even here few of them have dare
 to raise their prices except on importe