It is the misfortune of existing Portuguese politics and of the Portuguese Press that the party-leader is often a newspaper-editor. If we imagine Mr. Balfour as Leader of the Conservatives and editor and leader-writer of the Morning Post, Mr. Asquith as Leader of the Liberals and editor of the Westminster Gazette, Mr. Lloyd George at the Daily Chronicle, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald at a paper of his own, we have some idea on a large scale of the state of affairs in Portugal. “Men are rarely good judges in their own interests,” one of the characters in Francisco de Sá de Miranda’s play, Os Vilhalpandos, informs us. The Latin temperament, with its many merits and excellences, its logical and intelligent outlook, rarely has the quality of objective justice. It is too fervent and impassioned, loves and hates too ardently to pause to consider coldly the fairness of a matter. All the more welcome would be some independent organs in the Lisbon Press, some steadying element, some kind of Portuguese Spectator. As to partisan newspapers, there are far too many of them.

At Lisbon alone—if we include all kinds and descriptions of periodical publications—there are upwards of a hundred, and the majority of these are political. There are too many writers, who drift from a Coimbra degree into journalism at Lisbon, and who consider it far less important to write good Portuguese than to drag in some French or Latin quotation in and out of season, and most often misspelt.

It is worth while to consider the sad case of the Portuguese language, since it is or might be one of the finest languages in Europe. It is to be hoped that the Bible Society will distribute far and wide the Portuguese translation of the Bible by João Ferreira d’Almeida among all, peasants and others, who can read. It may not convert them to Protestantism, but will lay the basis for a revival of the Portuguese language, murdered daily in the Press. It is not only the Latin tags that are misspelt; in spite of the intricate official rules drawn up for Portuguese spelling, it remains unfixed, and words are sometimes transformed almost out of recognition. E, being often pronounced as i, becomes so written, s takes the place of c, and when these and other errors combine the result is remarkable; for instance, “scepticism” becomes siticismo, “miscellany” mecellanea, and so forth. The most minute rules of Portuguese orthography were drawn up after the Revolution. They went so far as to forbid you to write Sarah, while permitting ah and oh, with final H(aga). The confusion has only become worse confounded.

The Portuguese language as spoken in the provinces and by the peasants is far clearer and more attractive than as it is often spoken at Lisbon. As to the written language, it is too often debased by Gallicisms and by sesquipedalian words. It appears to shun directness like the plague. A “large crowd” becomes an “innumerable multitude,” a “fine view” is an “admirable panorama,” a horse is a solipede, a dog is um exemplar canino (O Seculo, 21st June, 1915). The terse phrase, “Wait and see,” translated into modern Portuguese, would become “Will you have the goodness to adopt an attitude of expectation and devote yourself to a consideration of the progress of events.” A sentence is often a great wave of abstract terms which leaves the reader stunned and breathless. Take the following from the Parnasso Portuguez Moderno (Lisbon, 1877): “A par das grandes descobertas scientificas do nosso seculo que pela via inductiva conduziram á demonstração integral dos phenomenos cosmicos pelo movimento etherodynamico.” All that this really means is “Beside the great discoveries made by science in our time in cosmic phenomena.” Or attempt to extract the character of the unfortunate Luis de Camões from this: “A forma da genialidade de Camões não foi a de uma sobrexcitação da sensibilidade mantendo em estado morbido os elementos nervosos; a boa cultura synthetica, completandose pela synessia da sua vida em diversissimos meios teve um objectivo para onde convergiram todas as assimilisações mentaes e adaptações praticas.” In a single page of one recent novel occur no less than fourteen abstract words ending in -ade.

Yet there is ample evidence to show that Portuguese at its best is well qualified to rival or even excel Castilian. It has by nature that softness and pliancy which the Castilian only attains exceptionally, at the hands of genius, and in Portuguese it is for the master hand to give this language that force and concision which comes naturally to the Castilian, and which was once a characteristic of Portuguese also. The saying, “Fortune usually kicks a man when he’s down,” is expressed in Portuguese in three words, “Sobre queda coices”—“after fall kicks,” and innumerable words are in Portuguese reduced to half the length they have in Latin and in other modern Romance languages. Solus, alone, becomes só; dolor, grief, dôr, major môr. As to its softness, delightful words such as chuva, rain, and all those words expressive of bittersweet regret and similar feelings—saudade, saudoso, meigo, mavioso—occur continually. But the tendency has been always to praise and exaggerate this softness, whereas it needs a corrective of terseness if it is not to become excessive. Even occasional harshnesses of construction are not amiss. The uglinesses and thicknesses of Portuguese pronunciation and spelling are of comparatively modern growth. Open some folio of the sixteenth century, and you will find not the nasal ão, but the straightforward am, not prompto but pronto, not lucta but luta, not tracto but trato—everything clearer and more direct. And as the scholar goes to his books the politician must turn to the people, not the people to which the Lisbon political press addresses itself, but the inhabitants of the remote provinces which have remained as stationary as old folios in a convent library, and preserve many uncorrupted excellences of language and custom. And indeed this is no matter of vain pedantry: for unless the language, and the citizens too, hark back to the sixteenth century, they are doomed to perish. No great literature can come of Portuguese as it is at present too often spoken and written, and without a literature a nation dwindles and dies. (Witness the Basques, who have the vigour of six ordinary nations, and are losing their language and nationality because they have never given much attention to the written word, content with their splendid old games and customs.) It is a pity that the passion for politics in Portugal has not inspired its devotees with nobler prose; though there are some journalists who are also men of letters, the majority of articles published are scarcely written in anything worthy of the name of prose, and this is the more regrettable as politics in Portugal stretches its net so wide, and thousands read the newspaper who have never opened a book.

Nearly a century ago, that is at about the time of the introduction into Portugal of constitutional government, a Portuguese writer proposed that the vanity of his countrymen should be turned to account by bestowing such titles as Viscount and Baron on rich persons according as they built a large or small number of houses, a large or small village in the more deserted parts of the country. Succeeding governments seemed to adopt the suggestion, only the titles were given systematically to those rich brazileiros and others who paid in so many contos to the public exchequer or who helped by their local influence to win an election. Thus, politics became more and more a dreadful octopus, its tentacles closing round and crushing the life out of the nation. Even those who do not know a ballot-box from a sheep-trough or a Minister from a counter-jumper, find themselves compelled to take part in politics. They may gain nothing from it, but they cannot escape it. And if a man wishes to get anything done, if he desires a road mended, a church built, a son placed, a title conferred, an opponent imprisoned, it is possible to arrange the matter, by means of politics. As to Lisbon, of course, it would not be Lisbon were it not for politics. Alas for the clubs of the Chiado, the cafés of the Rocio, the arcades of Black House Square, and even the shops, the streets, the praças, where men do gather together and gossip, were there not a new government to discuss every three or four months. The country may be driven to the dogs by these continual changes, but the politicians, amateur and professional, are in clover. And indeed this soft air and warm sun needs a spice of maledicencia and criticism of politicians. In England the climate affords an abundant topic, in Portugal the days are often monotonously beautiful, sometimes monotonously rainy, so that whereas people in England discuss a late fall of snow or an early frost, in Portugal they pass the time over the fall of the Government or a partial ministerial crisis. A wonderful amount of excellent wit and intelligence is expended over the subject, and it is extraordinary how every shopkeeper even, every newspaper-boy almost, has his political views, his favourite politician. Men whose education consists in being able to spell out the newspaper of their predilection will discuss the political situation with considerable eloquence and knowledge. Each political group counts as many real adherents as may fit into a not very large hall, and each politician who takes office is the target at which all the other political groups aim the shafts of their ridicule.

Nowhere have political parties been more numerous and more picturesque in their names and their theories than in Spain and Portugal. In Spain at a recent general election members of nearly a dozen political parties were returned to Parliament, and in Portugal since the introduction of constitutional government there have been Cartistas and Septembristas, Regeneradores, Dissidentes, Reformistas, Nacionalistas, Progressistas, and since the Revolution of 1910, Evolucionistas, Independentes, Reformistas, Integralistas, Unionistas, and Democratas. These are but a few of the many parties which have misinterpreted and abused the Parliamentary system in Portugal, some of them with names and actions as vague as Emilio Castelar’s celebrated Posibilistas. To take the present time there are the “Democrats” under the leadership of Dr. Affonso Augusto da Costa (their chief newspaper organs are O Mundo, A Montanha and A Patria), the “Evolutionists” under the leadership of Dr. José Antonio de Almeida (organ, A Republica), the “Unionists,” led by Dr. Manuel Brito Camacho (A Lucta), the “Independents” or Reformistas under Senhor Machado Santos (O Intransigente). The Democrats consider themselves the direct continuation of the original Republican party, and thus in a sense the only legitimate party, the others having branched off from it since the Revolution. These four are the definitely constituted Republican parties, besides which there are the more advanced Radical Republicans, the Syndicalists (O Sindicalista), Socialists (O Socialista), etc. There are also the Miguelists (A Nação), Manuelists (O Dia), and a Royalist party which may be called Sebastianist, and which vaguely desires the return of former conditions without having any very definite political creed. It must be remembered that there are but a million and a half Portuguese who can read and write, and that the Republic has disfranchised the remaining 4,500,000. But even of the 1,500,000 the majority take no active part in politics. The parties are in fact small personal groups collecting round any politician of intelligence or energy, or who knows the political ropes and the art of placing or promising to place his friends, and as a consequence they are too much inclined to give prominence to small personal questions and storms in the Lisbon teacup. The followers of the various parties are also known as Affonsistas, Almeidistas, Camachistas, as before the Revolution there were Franquistas, Henriquistas, Teixeiristas, etc.

These groups bicker with all the venom of personal hatred amid the most profound indifference of the country. The formation of a new party or a new ministry has nothing to do with the country. Even were elections in Portugal to be regarded as a sign of the people’s will, there had been but one general election since the Revolution at a time when the number of governments had to be counted on the fingers of both hands, and the Ministers of Finance on fingers and toes. So a new party will spring up in Lisbon and have little root in the country outside Lisbon. The attitude of the people towards all these politicians is one of profound distrust. They give them credit for sufficient intelligence to understand their own interests, but not sufficient to understand the interests of the country. A peasant in one of Eça de Queiroz’ novels is of opinion that quem manda lucra, and this melancholy sentiment (that he who has charge of affairs feathers his nest) may be heard at the present day. It is not said in anger, but as the expression of a very natural fact. They would be surprised if it were otherwise. While the unfortunate Minister of Finance is gazing at an empty exchequer, they imagine him plunging both hands in a rich store for himself and his friends. And in a sense they are right. It is expected of ministers in office to help their friends, in their business affairs, and to find places for their political followers somewhere in that huge bureaucracy which has been the bane of Portugal since the sixteenth century. And, of course, each new government appoints new civil governors and new mayors and usually many other officials in the provinces.

When it is remembered that Portugal has had some twenty governments during the life of a single government in England, it will be readily understood what disastrous confusion, what expense and waste, result, not to speak of personal ambitions kept continually at fever heat, on the watch and intriguing for some official post, and the large army of ex-officials disinclined or unable to find other employment. The list of Governments in the seven years 1908-15 is—save omissions—as follows: (1) João Franco, (2) Amaral, (3) Henriques, (4) Telles, (5) Lima, (6) Beirão, (7) Teixeira de Sousa, (8) Provisional Government, (9) João Chagas, (10) Vasconcellos, (11), Duarte Leite, (12) Costa, (13) Machado, (14) Azevedo, (15) Pimenta de Castro, (16) Revolutionary Government (João Chagas), (17) José de Castro, (18) José de Castro with new ministry. The first regular Republican Parliament (1911-14) saw the rise and fall of seven governments, and the rise and fall of each of them made as little commotion in the country (apart from the habitual discussions of the cafés and political clubs in the towns) as a pebble thrown into the Atlantic.

How can this be so, it may be asked, with the deputies of the nation sitting in Parliament? The answer is that elections in Portugal are a peculiar practice. The phrase “The Government makes the elections” obtains in Portugal as in Spain, and of itself speaks volumes. The Government is first appointed by some personal intrigue in Lisbon, with or without reference, or with a purely formal reference to the strength of the various parties in Parliament. It then proceeds to remodel the political framework throughout the country by appointing civil governors, mayors, etc., of its own political views. Then, when it is well seated in the saddle, it holds the elections. It is an unknown thing for a majority to be returned other than of the supporters of the Government. This would be discouraging to the electors (and also it would be impossible) if they took any interest in the results, but the results are always a foregone conclusion except in matters of detail. Senhor Affonso Costa after he had as Premier obtained thirty-four out of thirty-seven seats in a partial election, remarked in a speech to his party, the Democrats: “The country will give us more next time.” That is, the Democrat Government which had made the election was scarcely content to have obtained all except two or three seats, but better luck next time: one must not ask too much. “For the first time,” said Senhor Bernardino Machado after the Revolution, “there is going to be in this country an election without the intervention of the Government.” “The whole country must be fully convinced that it is not the Government that makes the Constituent Assembly” (from a speech delivered in December, 1910). Of course the thing was impossible, the country had not been brought up to use its own discretion at an election. At a meeting of the Provisional Government and the Directory of the Republican Party held in the very month in which these words were spoken and attended by Senhor Bernardino Machado who had spoken them, it was resolved to “bring to bear all the forces of the party without exception in their official organisation in order thus to prevent the adversaries of the Republic from introducing themselves disguisedly into the politics of the nation to disturb it.” Openly, of course, no Royalist would dare to present himself after such an invitation or warning. Yet the question has sometimes been put with a spider-and-fly blandness of hypocrisy: “Why do the Royalists not present themselves for election instead of conspiring?” although, with organised groups employed for “the defence of the Republic,” the Royalists who did so would have been more likely to see the inside of the Penitenciaria than of the House of Parliament. Sincere Republicans admit that the first Republican Parliament was artificially fabricated in Lisbon, and it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise: generations must pass before a really representative assembly can exist in Portugal. Meanwhile, fit, non nascitur. A candid member of the majority in the Chamber of Deputies addressed the little shrivelled minority in 1911 with the words: “Vocês, se vieram á Camara, foi porque nós quizemos” (“You are only here on sufferance”). In 1907 Senhor João Chagas was exclaiming against the fictions, lies, fraud, mockery of the elections: “In Portugal the Government makes the elections.... In our country it is not the people that elects its representatives: it is the Civil Governors and the Mayors.”

His words are still applicable, and recent years have fastened even more closely upon the country that political centralisation originally derived from Napoleon’s system, and which gives excellent results only so long as an administrative genius is at the head of affairs. The country is more and more a motionless and paralysed victim in the strait-waistcoat of an administration which is little but politics, and the cost of which exceeds, relatively, even that of France. The Revolution brought the charge of even greater interference of politics, otherwise the political system has remained much as before. Leges non animam mutant. The new electoral law has been described even by Republicans as being drawn up on the lines of the old.

O Seculo in a leading article said (5th November, 1911): “We must confess that the transformation of the old methods has not attained the required extent. There seems to be a wish to continue a life of personal politics.” The famous rotativism of the Monarchy, by which parties succeeded one another to power without any reference to the country, and with but little reference to its nominal representatives in Parliament, did not cease with the Revolution. “Nefarious rotativism is still with us,” said O Seculo a year later.

A Republica, a year later again (18th October, 1912) remarked in a leading article: “The truth is that, in two years of Republic, political cabals, persecutions, the boldness of the incompetent, the unscrupulousness of the ambitious, the indiscipline of nearly everyone, and the cowardice of the greater number, have prevented the Republic from entering frankly upon a system of careful administration.... We are continuing the system of mere words which was our glory in opposition but is our disgrace in power.” And a little later (24th March, 1913): “The country is tired. It is tired especially of the enormous lie that we have given it, as it looks upon a Republic which taxes arbitrarily, arrests and persecutes arbitrarily, governs and administers arbitrarily.” “We are living in anarchy as regards administration,” said Dr. Brito Canacho in A Lucta a month later. And Senhor Machado Santos, one of the founders of the Republic, soon found that the Republic did not answer to his dreams, and was not slow to say so in his newspaper, O Intransigente: “The Republic is very different from what the people had imagined, and as a result the majority has relapsed into indifference, while others, passing the limits of all reason, beat the record of petty and passionate politics” (3rd November, 1911). “Politics under the Monarchy brought the Portuguese nation to ruin, and politics under the Republic instead of being completely different, has adopted the old methods,” and “in fourteen months has done more harm than fourteen years of politics during the Monarchy” (13th December, 1911).

The peasants had remained indifferent from the first, where they were not secretly hostile to the Republic, but the workmen of the towns, or more accurately, of Lisbon, were bitterly disappointed. They noted “the enormous difference” between the words and deeds of the Republicans and that “everything is now sacrificed to the creeping politics of the bourgeois, who above the interests of the country set the ambitions of their politicians” (A Voz do Operario, 1st December, 1912). The Socialists reserved for themselves the right to “adopt the revolutionary methods so freely advocated formerly by the Republicans.”

It will be seen from the above quotations that Republicans have acknowledged that politics before the Revolution and politics after the Revolution were as much alike as the names of Muppim and Huppim, those sons of Benjamin. Sincere Republicans admit it; it is more difficult to find a remedy. When education has done its work these party groups may possibly, no doubt, broaden out into political parties with real root in the country, but it will be a process of centuries. And meanwhile, unfortunately, the Republicans, dissatisfied with the results of the Revolution, have recourse to a different remedy—more revolution—and try to cure themselves with a hair of the dog that has bitten them. Decentralisation, of course, is incompatible with the government by personal groups at Lisbon in the name of the nation. The new administrative code, if it is willing to take power from the mayors, is not willing to give it to the municipal bodies. Whatever authority is taken from the mayors is given not to locally elected corporations, but to other officials, mere instruments and offshoots of the central power. And indeed Portugal is scarcely ready yet for local autonomy. It is not ready for the parliamentary system, and the scrupulous care with which it and all constitutional forms are observed sometimes increases instead of diminishes the difficulty of a situation. The hope is that by maintaining the forms strictly, they will gradually become a living system instead of an empty framework, but that hope is indefinitely deferred owing to the number of political groups and the virulence of their personal animosities and ambitions.

Two great parties, instead of a number of personal groups, might yet succeed in extending their influence in the country, were they to adopt simple, practical programmes. But it is hopeless to expect that a programme, however simple, will be carried out so long as there are three or four Ministries to the year. Six or seven years should be the average length of a government, and the elections should be held at the end of that time, not at the beginning of its career: that is, the Government should ask the country to keep it in office if satisfied with what it has achieved, not merely inform the country that it has achieved its object of establishing itself in power. It was a brave and excellent precept of the late Spanish Premier, Señor Canalejas, whose assassination was so heavy a loss to Spanish politics, when he said: “I mean to remain in office a long time” (Yo me propongo seguir mucho tiempo en mi puesto), and the most praiseworthy achievement of Dr. Affonso Costa as Premier was that he did in the face of attacks from all sides and every criticism, succeed in remaining in office without a single change of Minister (one does not trouble to knock down puppets) for a whole year. Perhaps some more conciliatory Premier, who is not a mere party politician, with power based precariously in demagogy, may yet continue in office for five. It would make politics duller, but the country would gain undoubtedly. A Liberal and a Conservative Government succeeding one another at long intervals, and really making some effort to interest the people and base their authority in the will of the people, must be the aim of Portuguese politics for the present. Then in a century or two, when education has become general and communications have improved, it will be discovered that Portugal is an excellent country for government by referendum.

But for the present the Lisbon politicians continue to pipe to the country, and the country refuses to dance to their piping. The Provisional Government, formed immediately after the Revolution under the presidency of Dr. Theophilo Braga,[53] comprised Dr. Antonio José de Almeida[54] as Minister of the Interior, Dr. Bernardino Machado[55] as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Brito Camacho[56] as Minister of Public Works, and Dr. Affonso Costa[57] as Minister of Justice. So far only one party existed, called the Partido Republicano, but after the Provisional Government had come to an end Dr. Almeida dissociated himself from it to form what he called the Evolutionist Republican party, while a third party, the Unionist (União Nacional Republicano), was constituted under the leadership of Dr. Brito Camacho. Both these parties were slightly more Conservative in character, and in the Evolutionists especially this tendency was subsequently accentuated. Yet the Partido Republicano, under the leadership of Dr. Costa, continued to regard itself as the only Republican party. In a sense this was true, since the Republicans, in the words of Senhor Guerra Junqueiro, at the end of last century, are a party of “demolition rather than reconstruction.” Dr. Costa and his party have been excellent demolishers. Senhor Machado Santos,[58] who had led the Republican troops in October, 1910, in Lisbon, and is sometimes called the Founder of the Republic, constituted himself the candid critic of Republican political tendencies, and gathered round him a small group of Independents. But none of these dissenting leaders have had the strength to form a Ministry of their own, and the Conservative side of Republican politics has existed rather in theory than in action.

Of the Republican politicians, the most forcible, persistent, and unscrupulous, has been Dr. Affonso Costa. Dr. Brito Camacho has beside him the air of a retired thinker and student, while Dr. Antonio José d’Almeida has the reputation of being more of an idealist than a practical politician. Dr. Costa was described once in Le Temps as being likely to play “un rôle en évidence dans les manifestations de la rue.” He is a clever lawyer, quick to see his advantage and follow it up, but lacking far-sightedness and breadth of view. He has the strength of his narrowness, and may be called an inverted João Franco. But he is essentially a party politician, not a statesman. In all opposition, in every contretemps, he sees the hand of clericalism and the Jesuits, using anti-clericalism as a cement to keep his party together. His power has been built up and based on the art of the demagogue, and by controlling the mob and organised groups of Carbonarios he was able to control the destinies of the Republic during times of disorder, and to upset any government with which he disagreed. But if his hold on the mob has made him arbiter of the Republic he has also suffered at the hands of his supporters, and might well pray to be delivered from his friends.

The strange paeans of praise in O Mundo, poems to his vulto imortal, the resolve of an admirer to order a life-like silver statue of him, the arrest of persons for speaking ill of him, the arrest of others accused of wishing to assassinate him, as well as his own extraordinary speeches in Parliament and out of Parliament, showing an ignorance of the conditions of life in Portugal almost as profound as his ignorance of the conditions in foreign countries, might well have crushed him beneath a load of ridicule, but have merely served to keep him in the public eye. As to the attempts at assassinating him, these puffs of his political admirers are now quite discredited. One of the supposed murderers arrested at Santarem was found to be armed with nothing more deadly than a small pocket-knife, others arrested at the Praia das Maçãs, in the summer of 1913, were released as innocent after a year and a half’s imprisonment; another, this time a schoolboy, had a pistol put into his hand by Dr. Costa’s puffers, but fired so badly that he did not even succeed in hitting the railway carriage in which Dr. Costa was going to travel. His opponents must be fools indeed if they do not realise how greatly his party would gain were a real attempt made to assassinate him. He would be at once converted from a pleasant nonentity to a martyr, a kind of Portuguese Ferrer. Certainly Dr. Affonso Costa has been the politician most in evidence since the Revolution. It is rumoured that he keeps a large number of dogs and cuts off the tail of one of them Alcibiades-fashion as occasion offers, but this is almost certainly a calumnious invention, cruelty to animals being quite foreign to his nature. But it was almost pathetic to see how, at the advent of a statesman, he withered away politically as if he had met the Snark, and turned to conspiracy and revolution in order to overthrow him. For General Pimenta de Castro,[59] though not a party politician, showed truer statesmanship than all the party-leaders.

A return of the Democrats to power must be disastrous for many reasons, and the way the country would be thrown into fresh unrest and the prisons filled may be gauged from the fact that the Democrats are wonderfully vindictive, and are already marking out names of persons for arrest and of buildings (of Royalist newspapers, Conservative clubs, etc.) for attack. Vindictiveness in Portugal, especially in political questions, is carried to extraordinary lengths, and the man marked down for political persecution has to be continually on his guard. Perhaps years are allowed to pass, and the victim is given no inkling of hostility; perhaps he had left the country and returns to live peacefully and obscurely; then when he least expects it he will find himself in gaol or stabbed or shot. A foreigner will give far less offence if he adopts a detached, amused, supercilious attitude than if he studies Portuguese politics sincerely from a Portuguese point of view, and considers what is the best remedy for the country. But all who prefer to breathe the sweet air of Heaven rather than that of the prisons of Portugal, would do well to club together, and keep the “Democrats” out of office until they have moderated their inquisitorial ardour.

As to the Carbonarios, it is hoped that if the Royalists refrain from any violent demonstrations these devoted defenders of the Republic in and out of season will gradually disappear. The society was founded as early as 1823 in imitation, or rather in desecration, of the Italians who conspired against the yoke of Austria, and was reorganised in 1848. It was, however, chiefly after the abortive Republican rising of the 31st of January, 1891, that the Carbonarios gained in strength and, organised in small separate groups, in choças, barracas, and vendas, became the most powerful political force in the country. Their numbers in October, 1910, have been variously estimated at 40,000, 32,000, or a much lower figure. It is impossible to say, but it is certain that since the Revolution, while the old Carbonarios were not disbanded, new sets sprang up, organised by the Republican parties “for the defence of the Republic.” The Democrats especially advanced hand in hand with the Carbonarios, forming an army of Carbonario spies in their service, till in 1913 they came into office together. These new bodies of “insolent neo-Carbonarios,” as a Republican newspaper described them, spread distrust and unrest through the country, spying, insulting, arresting. “They allow us not a moment of tranquillity” (A Republica, 12th December, 1912). “There is no corner of the country now without a nest of Carbonarios,” wrote Senhor Machado Santos a year after the Revolution in O Intransigente, 3rd November, 1911. And these nests were not composed, principally, of the old Carbonarios. Thus, it was possible for Dr. Affonso Costa, when Premier, to say in the Chamber of Deputies that he considered the Carbonarios should have been disbanded after the Revolution, referring to the old Carbonarios.

The words naturally did not apply to the post-revolution brands, such as that of the “White Ants,” which at the very time that Dr. Costa spoke thus were being actively organised by his Government. According to the statements made in Parliament by Senhor Alberto Silveira, who during three years after the Revolution of 1910 was head of the Lisbon police, these White Ants (often suitably dressed in antique black, with flowing black ties), organised during Dr. Costa’s Premiership, included “some who gave their services with a view to future employment, others who contented themselves with payment in money.” Some “belonged to Carbonario associations created since the Revolution by individuals of low social and moral status.” “Others came from revolutionary clubs, such as the ‘Radical Club’; some were anarchists openly hostile to the existing régime.” Some used cards with G. Civil printed on them, standing for Grupo Civil, but intended to convey to their victims the official authority of the Governo Civil. Groups (nucleos de vigilancia) had been formed for the defence of the Republic, said Dr. Costa on another occasion, at the meeting of the Republican (Democrat) Party at Aveiro in April, 1913, and had been such a success that they would be continued. But officially, of course, the Carbonaria does not exist, the Government knows nothing about it, and if you ask a Carbonario he will answer that there is no such thing in Portugal.

There should be no such society in Portugal. It is not needed and only serves to spread a feeling of distrust and discomfort in daily life, which can only be paralleled by the state of suspicion and disquiet under some of the Roman Emperors or in the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Or if it is needed to prop up the Republic, the Republic by that very fact stands condemned. But the Carbonarios should understand that their services are no longer required, and take a well-earned rest. If they do not and, encouraged by a certain section of the Republican Press, commit fresh outrages, they will signally help the Royalist cause and hasten the Restoration. Almost the worst feature of the last few years has been the encouragement given by the Democrat Press to attack the life and property of priests, Roman Catholics, and Royalists. Such a journalist as the editor of O Mundo was indirectly responsible for the death of Lieutenant Soares and other murders and should have been punished accordingly. The liberty of the Press cannot be held to include toleration of direct incitements to kill political opponents. The Mundo is all the more dangerous in that it is not read by the educated, but by ignorant persons, who have no means of knowing how false and insidious are many of its contents.