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any country should have been reduced to such a state after a contest so bravely sustained and so gloriously concluded, would be unintelligible, without some knowledge of the condition in which it was found at the commencement of that contest. This is not the place for inquiring into the causes which brought about the debasement of a people formerly so distinguished for enterprise and energy, and for the part they bore in the history of the world, that there exists a Persian map, in which Portugal is called the capital of the Franks. Their moral and intellectual degradation reached its lowest point towards the middle of the last century, under John V.; but those were tranquil times; there were neither political nor financial difficulties to contend with; and the Brazilian mines sent in their produce so abundantly, that during a series of years the Portugueze government was the richest in Europe. There were no complicated questions of political economy to be considered-no solicitude about balancing the ways and means. Gold and diamonds came by the annual fleet as regularly as harvest returned, and the vintage, and the olive gathering. The government had only to receive and spend; and the receipts were so great, that it seemed never to regard the extent of its expenditure. The king was an easy, good-natured, superstitious voluptuary; he indulged the people with burning a few Jews now and then-had his harem in a nunnery, a little way from Lisbon-dealt largely with Rome, for spiritual wares-and kept clear accounts with his confessor. No expense was deemed too great for adorning a few favoured churches; candlesticks were ordered from Italy, of the stateliest height, greatest calibre, and finest workmanship; mosaic pictures; and altar-frontispieces of lapis-lazzuli and silver, the cost of the sculpture exceeding the value of these precious materials. Such literature, also, as the Inquisition would tolerate, partook of this overflowing wealth; and the Royal Academy had money at its disposal, for printing, in an expensive form, whatever it thought fit; among which are sixteen huge volumes of its own proceedings-the most worthless that ever academy published.

Machiavelli lays it down as a general rule, that no commonwealth or kingdom can either be well founded or effectually reformed, except by a single person; he holds legislation in its highest degree to be, as Harrington says of invention, a solitary thing.? This maxim Machiavelli derived from ancient

E debbesi pigliare questo per una regola generale, che non mai o di rado, occorre che alcuna republica o regno sia da principio ordinato bene, o al tutto di nuovo fuori degli ordini vecchi riformato, se non è ordinato da uno; anzi è necessario che uno solo sia quello che dia il modo, a dalla cui mente dipenda qualunque simile ordinazione.'— Discorsi sopra Livio, lib. i. c. 9.

history;

history; and modern history confirms it thus far, that no nation has at any time been eminently prosperous, unless a single mind predominated in its councils. Portugal was governed by a single mind after the death of John V., during the whole of his successor's reign, and that so vigorous a one, that it gave fair ground of hope for such a thorough reformation of a thoroughly corrupted system, as could only be brought about by despotic power, wisely directed to the best ends. Circumstances had given Pombal complete ascendancy over a weak, well-intentioned king, whom he faithfully served; he set about the work of reform with a resolution and ability which have obtained for him, until this day, from the Portugueze people the appellation of the Great Marquis (O Grande Marquez); but, as in every instance wherein a man has armed himself with such power, professing, hoping, and even (as in Cromwell's case) sincerely and religiously intending to employ it righteously, the reformer became a tyrant himself. Pombal was made so, not by ambition, for he had no objects in view but what were lawful and just, if they could have been effected by lawful and just means; not by any meaner passions-but by the sense of insecurity, distrust, suspicion, the treachery and the baseness, with which he was surrounded, and the opinion of human nature which he formed from the conduct not only of those by whom he was secretly opposed, but of those also who served him. The moral and political Calvinism in which most practical politicians end, with whatever theories they may begin, their course, hardened a heart which was not naturally compassionate; and having persuaded himself that men in general could not be treated worse than they deserved, he cared not what sufferings he inflicted upon individuals. When his victims were put to death it was with tortures, not such as the law (always sufficiently barbarous) had enacted, but specially enjoined for the occasion: when they were imprisoned, it was in dungeons, and for life. When the king's death brought about his fall, eight hundred state-prisoners were set at liberty; some of them had been incarcerated in early youth, and came out grey-headed men; and some found themselves so forlorn and friendless, after the destruction of their families and fortunes, that they entreated, as the only kindness which could be shown them, to be received into their dungeons again.

No moral reformation could be expected from such a reformer. His views extended not so far; they rested in the intellectual improvement of the nation, and in the promotion of its trade and manufactures. In the first of these objects he succeeded, by delivering Portugal from the Jesuits, and reforming the university, which, under their influence, had sunk to the lowest point of degradation; in the second, he succeeded also, to a certain degree,

though

though some of his measures are of questionable policy, and are matter of discussion at this day. More he would have effected had his administration continued longer. And though some of his best measures were undone when the friars recovered their ascendancy at court, immediately upon his overthrow, Portugal is yet beholden to him for a greatly improved system of education, for the restoration of its literature, and for a great increase of commercial activity. But nothing was done towards reviving the old constitutional forms and institutions, which, in the best days of Portugal, were the checks upon its absolute monarchy; nothing toward giving efficacy to good laws; nothing toward restoring a sense of integrity in the magistrates and judges, of honour in the nobles, of morality and religion, as distinct from the perfunctory observance of superstitious services, in all ranks. In none of these great and vital points did he attempt to improve the condition of his degraded country; nor had any improvement been effected or attempted in them since, till those revolutionary experiments of which we shall speak hereafter. The scandalous corruption of justice in civil cases, and the open contempt of it in criminal ones, would seem incredible to those who live in a land where it is as impossible to bribe a judge as to obtain impunity for a flagrant and notorious act of legal guilt. But the representations, incredible as they appear, which all travellers have made of the state of Portugal, in this respect, are unexaggerated. Every crime which did not come under the cognizance of the Inquisition, might be committed without fear of punishment, almost without risk of molestation; every thing was allowed to take its course, except law, literature, conscience, freemasonry. Costigan's Sketches, which were published something more than forty years ago, describe a state of flagitious lawlessness more resembling what we might expect to find in the most barbarous parts of the Mahommedan world than in a European and Christian nation; and yet, though some of the atrocious tragedies which are related in that book may be circumstantially inaccurate, (and from their very nature, indeed, are likely to be so,) the general representation beyond all doubt is faithful. Brigadier Ferrier, an Irish officer in the Portugueze service, is known to have been the author of this book. We once heard a brother officer of his, in the same service, doubt his claim to it; and the reason which he gave for doubting it was, that shocking as the facts are which are there stated, Ferrier knew so many more, and worse, of the same kind, that if he had written the work it must have presented a much more unfavourable picture of the national character. The 'Sketches of Portugueze Life' are perfectly in keeping with Brigadier Ferrier's, though forty years elapsed

and

between

between their publication; each authenticates the other, for such a resemblance could not have existed, unless both had been drawn from the life.

The reader who should form his opinion of Portugal from these books, and give that belief to them which all persons who are well acquainted with that country will agree in assuring him that they are entitled to, would suppose the Portugueze to be some of the wickedest people upon earth; and those travellers who know no more of them than what may be seen at Lisbon, would assent to the conclusion. Yet such an opinion, however fairly and unavoidably it might be formed from such premises, would be most unjust. The proof is full and damnatory against the privileged classes, against the government, and all who are in authority under it; as to the populace of the metropolis, the refuse of civilised society is, to the opprobrium of civilization, the same everywhere. But it is not by these that the nation is to be estimated; these were its diseased members, its fungous excrescences, its wens and cancers, its boils and blains. The people-(we are speaking, it must be remembered, of what Portugal was at the commencement of the Peninsular war)-the people, as a people, partook so little of the corruption, that after allowing all that can be allowed (much as that is) to the conservative influence of long established order, and of those Christian principles which retain their vitality and their saving virtue amid the grossest and darkest superstition, much must be ascribed to a national character that deserved to be called eminently and almost singularly good. Let us imagine what London would be if the doors of all its churches stood open day and night, offering an asylum for murderers; and if any man might stab another in the street without risk of being molested on his way to such a place of security let us imagine what the whole of England would be if quarrels were as commonly decided by the knife as they are by fair fighting, among the lower orders; and if, among the higher, it were the custom to employ an assassin instead of sending a challenge ;-if a miscreant incurred no more danger by killing his wife, than he does by deserting her, or by offering her for sale with a halter round her neck; if the criminal laws were in a state of perpetual abeyance, so that if thief, robber, or murderer, happened, by any capricious exercise of authority, to be sent to prison, the worst he would have to apprehend would be that of begging at the grate for alms, till a general gaol delivery took place, which was effected when the prison was full, by turning one set of prisoners loose to make room for another! Let us suppose, also, that all fear of punishment in another world was effectually taken away by a religion in which all the lower classes entirely believed. Let us suppose what

Great

Great Britain would be if this were the state of laws, manners, and belief, and imagine, if we can imagine, what would be the condition of a country then, which has its Thurtells and its Corders, its Burkes and its Hares, now! That consideration may enable us to render justice to the Portugueze. The peasantry, notwithstanding this lawlessness, this utter destitution of all good government, were an inoffensive, good people: for the trading part of the community, it may suffice to say, that in no other part of Europe, or the world, did the British merchant rely with more confidence on the probity of those with whom he dealt; and, with regard to literature, nowhere, we verily believe, were there so many persons who were engaged in it purely for its own sake; steadily pursuing their quiet and meritorious labours, without the expectation or possibility of reward; neither dreaming of fame or emolument, or encouragement of any kind, but contented with the consciousness that they were collecting and preserving knowledge, which hereafter, at some indefinite time, others would find useful.

It has been truly observed, that, during the middle ages, more and greater crimes were committed by the higher classes than by the lower; because the people were kept in fear, and in order, and in place, whereas the privileged orders were powerful enough to set the laws at defiance. So it continued to be in Portugal, although a great alteration had been produced in the character of both classes. The higher orders were much worse than they had been in the middle ages, having lost not only the chivalrous virtues, but even the manly qualities which such times call forth. The peasantry, on the other hand, were much better, because they retained the simplicity of former days, but instead of a warlike, were become habitually a quiet and peaceful people. Murders, arising from jealousy, or from sudden anger, were to be expected, where the laws took no cognizance of such occurrences, and the priest dispensed a spiritual pardon upon the easiest terms. Such crimes, therefore, were, of course, common; and of course, also, those crimes which grow out of the relations of a highly civilized and complicated society were not found among them. But robbery was scarcely heard of, except in the vicinity of the capital; there was no country in which a traveller felt himself more secure, though he well knew that the laws afforded him no security. This was the case before the French invaded that kingdom in 1807; and that it should have been so, as certainly it was, can only be ascribed to the general probity of the people, and to that original goodness in the national character which continued to exist whereever it was not within the sphere of a contagious and pestilent corruption.

That

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