Chapter XX: In Her Mother's Place (1)

Whatever madame's past life had been--and it had been such as a handsome woman without money or social status, fond of luxury and to whom work was abhorrent, with a clear will and very distinct knowledge of her own desires, clever and destitute of moral principle, finds made to her hand--whatever ugly bits were hidden behind the veil of decent pretence which she had worn with such grace during her sojourn at North Aston, she did honestly mean to do righteously now.

She had deceived the man who had married her in such adoring good faith--granted; but when he had reconciled himself to as much of the cheat as he must know, she meant to make him happy--so happy that he should not regret what he had done. Though she was no marquise, only plain Madame de Montfort--so far she must confess for policy's sake, and to forestall discovery by ruder means, but what remained beyond she must keep secret as the grave, trusting to favorable fortune and man's honor for her safety--though the story of the fraudulent trustee was untrue, and she never had more money than the three hundred pounds brought in her box wherewith to plant her roots in the North Aston soil--though all the Lionnet bills were yet to be paid, and her husband must pay them, with awkward friends in London occasionally turning up to demand substantial sops, else they would show their teeth unpleasantly,--still, she would get his forgiveness, and she would make him happy.

And she would be good to Leam. She would be so patient, forbearing, tender, she would at last force the child to love her. It was a new luxury to this woman, who had knocked about the world so long and so disreputably, to feel safe and able to be good. She wondered what it would be like as time went on--if the rest which she felt now at the cessation of the struggle and the consciousness of her security would become monotonous or be always restful. At all events, she knew that she was happy for the day, and she trusted to her own tact and management to make the future as fair as the present.

The home-coming was triumphant. Because the rector was inwardly grieved at the loss of his ewe-lamb--for he had lost her in that special sense of spiritual proprietorship which had been his--he was determined to make a demonstration of his joy. He and Mrs. Birkett meant to stand by Mrs. Dundas as they had stood by Madame la Marquise de Montfort, and to publish their partisanship broadly. When, therefore, the travelers returned to North Aston, they found the rector and his wife waiting to receive them at their own door. Over the gate was an archway of evergreens with "Welcome!" in white chrysanthemums, and the posts were wreathed with boughs and ribbons, but leaving "Virginia Cottage" in its glossy evidence of the new regime. The drive was bordered all through with flowers from the rectory garden, and Lionnet too had been ransacked, and the hall was festooned from end to end with garlands, like a transformation-scene in a pantomime. One might have thought it the home-coming of a young earl with his girl-bride, rather than that of a middle-aged widower of but moderate means with his second wife, one of whose past homes had been in St. John's Wood, and one of her many names Mrs. Harrington.

But it pleased the good souls who thus displayed their sympathy, and it gratified those for whom it had all been done; and both husband and wife expressed their gratitude warmly, and lived up to the occasion in the emotion of the moment.

When their effusiveness had a little calmed, down, when Mrs. Dundas had caressed her child--which poor Mrs. Birkett gave up to her with tears--and Mr. Dundas had also taken it in his arms and called it "Little Miss Dundas" and "My own little Fina" tenderly--when, the servants had been spoken to prettily and the bustle had somewhat subsided, Mrs. Dundas looked round for something missing. "And where is dear Leam?" she asked with her gracious air and sweet smile.

It was very nice of her to be the first to miss the girl. The father had forgotten her, friends had overlooked her, but the stepmother, the traditional oppressor, was thoughtful of her, and wanted to include her in the love afloat. This little circumstance made a deep impression on the three witnesses. It was a good omen for Leam, and promised what indeed her new mother did honestly design to perform.

"Even that little savage must be tamed by such persistent sweetness," said Mr. Birkett to his wife, while she, with a kindly half-checked sigh, true to her central quality of maternity and love of peace all round, breathed "Poor little Leam!" compassionately.

Leam, however, was no more to the fore at the home-coming than she had been at the marriage, and much searching went on before she was found. She was unearthed at last. The gardener had seen her shrink away into the shrubbery when the carriage-wheels were heard coming up the road, and he gave information to the cook, by whom the truant was tracked and brought to her ordeal.

Mrs. Birkett went out by the French window to meet her as she came slowly up the lawn draped in the deep mourning which for the very contrariety of love she had made deeper since the marriage, her young head bent to the earth, her pale face rigid with despair, her heart full of but one feeling, her brain racked with but one thought, "Mamma is crying in heaven: mamma must not cry, and this stranger must be swept from her place."

She did not know how this was to be done; she only knew that it must be done. She had all along expected the saints to work some miracle of deliverance for her, and she looked hourly for its coming. She had prayed to them so passionately that she could not understand why they had not answered. Still, she trusted them. She had told them she was angry, and that she thought them cruel for their delay; and in her heart she believed that they knew they had done wrong, and that the miracle would be wrought before too late. It was for mamma, not for herself. Madame must be swept like a snake out of the house, that mamma might no longer be pained in heaven. Personally, it made no difference whether she had to see madame at Lionnet or here at home, but it made all the difference to mamma, and that was all for which she cared.

Thinking these things, she met Mrs. Birkett midway on the lawn, the kind soul having come out to speak a soothing word before the poor child went in, to let her feel that she was sympathized with, not abandoned by them all. Fond as she was of madame, the new Mrs, Dundas, and little as she knew of Leam, the facts of the case were enough for her, and she saw Adelaide and herself in the child's sorrow and poor Pepita's successor. "My dear," she said affectionately as she met the girl walking so slowly up the lawn, "I dare say this is a trial to you, but you must accept it for your good. I know what you must feel, but it is better for you to have a good kind stepmother, who will be your friend and instructress, than to be left with no one to guide you."

Leam's sad face lifted itself up to the speaker. "It cannot be good for me if it is against mamma," she said.

"But, Leam, dear child, be reasonable. Your mamma, poor dear! is dead, and, let us trust, in heaven." The good soul's conscience pricked her when she said this glib formula, of which in this present instance she believed nothing. "Your father has the most perfect right to marry again. Neither the Church nor the Bible forbids it; and you cannot expect him to remain single all his life--when he needs a wife so much, too, on your account--because he was married to your dear mamma when she was alive. Besides, she has done with this life and all the things of the earth by now; and even if she has not, she will be happy to see you, her dear child, well cared for and kindly mothered."

Leam raised her eyes with sorrowful skepticism, melancholy contempt. It was the old note of war, and she responded to it. "I know mamma," she said; "I know what she is feeling."

She would have none of their spiritual thaumaturgy--none of that unreal kind of transformation with which they had tried to modify their first teaching. There was no satisfaction in imagining mamma something different from her former self--no more the real, fervid, passionate, jealous Pepita than those pear-shaped transparent bags, so logically constructed by Mrs. Corfield's philosopher, are like the ideal angels of loving fancy. If mamma saw and knew what was going on here at this present moment--and Mrs. Birkett was not the bold questioner to doubt this continuance of interest--she felt as she would have felt when alive, and she would be angry, jealous, weeping, unhappy.

Mrs. Birkett was puzzled what to say for the best to this uncomfortable fanatic, this unreasonable literalist. When believers have to formularize in set words their hazy notions of the feelings and conditions of souls in bliss, they make but a lame business of it; and nothing that the dear woman could propound, keeping on the side of orthodox spirituality, carried comfort or conviction to Leam. Her one unalterable answer was always simply, "I know mamma: I know what she is feeling," and no argument could shake her from her point.

At last Mrs. Birkett gave up the contest. "Well, my child," she said, sighing, "I can only hope that the constant presence of your stepmother, her kindness and sweetness, will in time soften your feeling toward her."

Leam looked at her earnestly. "It is not for myself," she said: "it is for mamma."

And she said it with such pathetic sincerity, such an accent of deep love and self-abandonment to her cause, that the rector's wife felt her eyes filling up involuntarily with tears. Wrong-headed, dense, perverse as Leam was, her filial piety was at the least both touching and sincere, she said to herself, a pang passing through her heart. Adelaide would not speak of her if she were dead as this poor ignorant child spoke of her mother. Yet she had been to Adelaide all that the best and most affectionate kind of English mother can be, while Pepita had been a savage, now cruel and now fond; one day making her teeth meet in her child's arm, another day stifling her with caresses; treating her by times as a woman, by times as a toy, and never conscientious or judicious.

All the same, Leam's fidelity, if touching, was embarrassing as things were; so was her belief in the continued existence of her mother. But what can be done with those uncompromising reasoners who will carry their creeds straight to their ultimates, and will not be put off with eclectic compromises of this part known and that hidden--so much sure and so much vague? Mrs. Birkett determined that her husband should talk to the child and try to get a little common sense into her head, but she doubted the success of the process, perhaps because in her heart she doubted the skill of the operator.

By this time they reached the window, and the woman and the girl passed through into the room.

Mrs. Dundas came forward to meet her stepdaughter kindly--not warmly, not tumultuously--with her quiet, easy, waxen grace that never saw when things were wrong, and that always assumed the halcyon seas even in the teeth of a gale. For her greeting she bent forward to kiss the girl's face, saying, "My dear child, I am glad to see you," but Leam turned away her head.

"I am not glad to see you, and I will not kiss you," she said.

Her father frowned, his wife smiled. "You are right, my dear: it is a foolish habit," she said tranquilly, "but we are such slaves to silly habits," she added, looking at the rector and his wife in her pretty philosophizing way, while they smiled approvingly at her ready wit and serene good-temper.

"Will you say the same to me, Leam?" asked her father with an attempt at jocularity, advancing toward her.

"Yes," said Leam gravely, drawing back a step.

"Tell me, Mrs, Birkett, what can be done with such an impracticable creature?" cried Mr. Dundas.

"She will come right: in time, dear husband," said the late marquise sweetly; and Mrs. Birkett echoed, looking at the girl kindly, "Oh yes, she will come right in time."

"If you mean by coming right, letting you be my mamma, I never will," cried Leam, fronting her stepmother.

"Silence, Leam!" cried Mr. Dundas angrily.

His wife laid her taper fingers tenderly on his. "No, no, dear husband: let her speak," she pleaded, her voice and manner admirably effective. "It is far better for her to say what she feels than to brood over it in silence. I can wait till she comes to me of her own accord and says, 'Mamma, I love you: forgive me the past'"

"You are an angel," said Mr. Dundas, pressing her hand to his lips, his eyes moist and tender.

"I always said it," the rector added huskily--"the most noble-natured woman of my acquaintance."

"I never will come to you and say, 'Mamma, I love you,' and ask you to forgive me for being true to my own mamma," said Learn. "I am mamma's daughter, no other person's."

Mrs. Dundas smiled. "You will be; mine, sweet child," she said.

How ugly Leam's persistent hate looked by the side of so much unwearied goodness! Even Mrs. Birkett, who pitied the poor child, thought her tenacity too morbid, too dreadful; and the rector honestly held her as one possessed, and regretted in his own mind that the Church had no formula for efficient exorcism. Believing, as he did, in the actuality of Satan, the theory of demoniacal possession came easy as the explanation of abnormal qualities.

Her father raged against himself in that he had given life to so much moral deformity. And yet it was not from him that she inherited "that cursed Spanish blood," he said, turning away with a groan, including Pepita, Leam, all his past with its ruined love and futile dreams, its hope and its despair, in that one bitter word.

"Don't say that, papa: mamma and I are true. It is you English that are bad and false," said Leam at bay.

Mrs. Dundas raised her hand, "Hush, hush, my child!" she said in a tone of gentle authority. "Say of me and to me what you like, but respect your father."

"Oh, Leam has never done that," cried Mr. Dundas with intense bitterness.

"No," said Leam, "I never have. You made mamma unhappy when she was alive: you are making her unhappy now. I love mamma: how can I love you?"

And then, her words realizing her thoughts in that she seemed to see her mother visibly before her, sorrowful and weeping while all this gladness was about in the place which had once been hers, and whence she was now thrust aside--these flowers of welcome, these smiling faces, this general content, she alone unhappy, she who had once been queen and mistress of all--the poor child's heart broke down, and she rushed from the room, too proud to let them see her cry, but too penetrated with anguish to restrain the tears.

"I am sure I don't know what on earth we can do with that girl," said Mr. Dundas with a dash of his old weak petulance, angry with circumstance and unable to dominate it--the weak petulance which had made Pepita despise him so heartily, and had winged so many of her shafts.

"Time and patience," said madame with her grand air of noble cheerfulness. But she had just a moment's paroxysm of dismay as she looked through the coming years, and thought of life shared between Leam's untamable hate and her husband's unmanly peevishness. For that instant it seemed to her that she had bought her personal ease and security at a high price.

As Leam went up stairs the door of her stepmother's room was standing open. The maid had unpacked the boxes most in request, and was now at tea in the servants' hall, telling of her adventures in Paris, where master and mistress had spent the honeymoon, and in her own way the heroine of the hour, like her betters in the parlor. The world seemed all wrong everywhere, life a cheat and love a torture, to Leam, as she stood within the open door, looking at the room which had been hers and her mother's, now transformed and appropriated to this stranger, She did not understand how papa could have done it. The room in which mamma had lived, the room in which she had died, the window from which she used to look, the very mirror that used to reflect back her beautiful and beloved face--ah, if it could only have kept what it reflected!--and papa to have given all this away to another woman! Poor mamma! no wonder she was unhappy. What could she, Leam, do to prevent all this wickedness if the blessed ones were idle and would not help her?

Her eyes fell on a bottle placed on the console where madame's night appliances were ranged--her night-light and the box of matches, her Bible and a hymn-book, a tablespoon, a carafe full of water and a tumbler, and this bottle marked "Cherry-water--one tablespoonful for a dose." In madame's handwriting underneath stood, "For my troublesome heart." Only about two tablespoonsful were left.

Leam took the bottle in one hand, the other thrust itself mechanically into her hair. No one was about, and the house was profoundly still, save for the voices coming up from the room below in a subdued and not unpleasant murmur, with now and then the child's shrill babble breaking in through the deeper tones like occasional notes in a sonata. Out of doors were all the pleasant sights and sounds of the peaceful evening coming on after the labors of the busy day. The birds were calling to each other in the woods before nesting for the night; the homing rooks flew round and round their trees, cawing loudly; the village dogs barked their welcome to their masters as they came off the fields and the day's work; and the setting sun dyed the autumn leaves a brighter gold, a deeper crimson, a richer russet. It was all so peaceful, all so happy, in this soft mild evening of the late September--all seemed so full of promise, so eloquent of future joy, to those who had just begun their new career.

But Leam knew nothing of the poetry of the moment--felt nothing of its pathetic irony in view of the deed she was half-unconsciously designing. She saw only, at first dimly, then distinctly, that here were the means by which mamma's enemy might be punished and swept from mamma's place, and that if she failed her opportunity now she would be a traitor and a coward, and would fail in her love and duty to mamma. No, she would not fail. Why should she? It was the way which the saints themselves had opened, the thing she had to do; and the sooner it was done the better for mamma.

She uncorked the bottle of cherry-water, good for that troublesome heart of poor madame's. All that Alick had told her of the action of poisons came back upon her as clearly as her mother's words, her mother's voice. This cherry-water, too, had the smell of bitter almonds, and was own sister to that in the little phial in her other hand. Now she understood it all--why she had been taken to Steel's Corner, why Alick had taught her about poisons, and why her mamma had told her to steal that bottle. She looked at it with its eloquent paper marked "Poison" wound about it spirally like a snake, uncorked it and emptied half into the cherry-water.

"Two drops are enough, and there are more than two there," she said to herself. "Mamma must be safe now." And with this she left the room and went into her own to watch and wait.

It was early to-night when Mrs. Dundas retired. There were certain things which she wanted to do on this her first night in her new home; and among them she wanted to put that green velvet pocket-book, gold embroidered, in some absolutely safe place, where it would not be seen by prying eyes or fall into dangerous hands. She did not intend to destroy its contents. She knew enough of the uncertainty of life to hold by all sorts of anchorages; and though things looked safe and sweet enough now, they might drift into the shallows again, and she wished her little Fina's future to be assured by one or other of those charged with it--if the stepfather failed, then to fall back on the father. Wherefore she elected to keep these papers in a safe place rather than destroy them, and the safest place she could think of was Pepita's jewel-case, now her own. It had a curious lock, which no other key than its own would fit--a lock that would have baffled even a "cracksman" and his whole bunch of skeleton keys.

In putting them away, obliged for the need of space to take off the paper wrappings, she was foolish enough to look at the photographs within--just one last look before banishing them for ever from her sight, as an honest wife should--and the sight of the handsome young face which she had loved sincerely in its day, and which was the face of her child's father, shook her nerves more than she liked them to be shaken. That troublesome heart of hers had begun to play her strange tricks of late with palpitation and irregularity. She could not afford that her nerve should fail her. That gone, nothing would remain to her but a wreck. But her cherry-water was a pleasant and safe calmant, and she knew exactly how much to take.

Her maid saw nothing more to-night than she had seen on any other night of her service. Her mistress, if not quite so sweet to her as to Mrs. Birkett, say, or the rector, was yet fairly amiable as mistresses go, and to-night was neither better nor worse than ordinary. Her attendance went on in the usual routine, with nothing to remark, bad or good; and then madame laid her fair head on the pillow, and took a tablespoonful of her calmant to check the palpitation that had come on, and to still her nerves, which that last look backward had somewhat disturbed.

How beautiful she looked! Fair and lovely as she had always been to the eyes of Sebastian Dundas, never had she looked so grand as now. Her yellow hair was lying spread out on the pillow like a glory: one white arm was flung above her head, the other hung down from the bed. Her pale face, with her mouth half open as if in a smile at the happy things she dreamt, peaceful and pure as a saint's, seemed to him the very embodiment of all womanly truth and sweetness. He leaned over her with a yearning rapture that was almost ecstasy. This noble, loving woman was his own, his life, his future. No more dark moods of despair, no more angry passions, disappointment and remorse; all was to be cloudless sunshine, infinite delight, unending peace and love.

"My darling, oh my love!" he said tenderly, laying his hand on her glossy golden hair and kissing her. "Virginie, give me one word of love on your first night at home."

She was silent. Was her sleep so deep that even love could not awake her? He kissed her again and raised her head on his arm. It fell back without power, and then he saw that the half-opened mouth had a little froth clinging about the lips.

A cry rang through the house--cry on cry. The startled servants ran up trembling at they knew not what, to find their master clasping in his arms the fair dead body of his newly-married wife.

"Dead--she is dead," they passed in terrified whispers from each to each.

Leam, standing upright in her room, in her clinging white night-dress, her dark hair hanging to her knees, her small brown feet bare above the ankle--not trembling, but tense, listening, her heart on fire, her whole being as it were pressed together, and concentrated on the one thought, the one purpose--heard the words passed from lip to lip. "Dead," they said--"dead!"

Lifting up her rapt face and raising her outstretched arms high above her head, with no sense of sin, no consciousness of cruelty, only with the feeling of having done that thing which had been laid on her to do--of having satisfied and avenged her mother--she cried aloud in a voice deepened by the pathos of her love, the passion of her deed, into an exultant hymn of sacrifice, "Mamma, are you happy now? Mamma! mamma! leave off crying: there is no one in your place now."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FAMISHING PORTUGAL.

The following paper contains the substance of a remarkable letter and accompanying documents recently received from Portugal:

LISBON, September, 1875.

You wish to know what truth there is in the cable reports of "a drought in the north and south of Portugal, and a threatened famine in two or three provinces." Shall I tell you all? Well, then, Heaven nerve me for the task! I shall have an unpleasant story to narrate.

You, who have been in Portugal, need not be reminded that the kingdom consists of six provinces--Minho, Tras-os-Montes, Beira, Estremadura, Alemtejo and Algarve. In the early part of this summer a drought affected the whole kingdom. Toward the end of July abundant rain fell in Minho, where two products only are raised--wine ("port wine") and maize. The rain, which, had it fallen in Alemtejo, the principal wheat-province of the kingdom, would have done incalculable good, benefited neither the vineyards of Minho nor the maize-crop anywhere. The consequence is, that this last-named crop, the principal bread-food of the country, has failed, and famine prevails throughout the land. Having lived in America, I know what you, so accustomed to freedom and plenty, will say to this:

"France, Sprain, Morocco, England--all these countries are near to Portugal. If she is short of bread, let her simply exchange wine for it, and there need be no fears of a famine."

Ah, my dear American friends, little do you suspect the artlessness of this reply. Know, then, that those who own the wines of Portugal do not lack for bread, and those who lack for bread do not own the wines; that the first of these classes are the aristocrats and foreigners who live in the cities or abroad, and the second the people at large; that there exists an abyss between these classes so profound that no political institutions yet devised have been able to bridge it; that there is no credit given by one class to the other, and few dealings occur between them; and that the laws of Portugal discourage the importation of grain into the kingdom.

You are a straightforward people, and dive at once to the bottom of a subject. "Why do not the Portuguese devote themselves so largely to the cultivation of grain that there need never be danger of famine?" you will now ask. My answer to this is: The people do not own the land.

"What! Were the reforms of Pombal, the French Revolution, the Portuguese revolution of 1820 and the various constitutions since that date, the abolition of serfdom and mortmain, and the law of 1832, all ineffectual to emancipate the Portuguese peasant from the thralldom of land?"

Alas! they were indeed all in vain, and the Portuguese peasantry stands to-day at the very lowest step of European civilization--far beneath all others. The number of agricultural workers in Portugal is about eight hundred and seventy-five thousand. Of this number, some seven hundred thousand are hired laborers, farm-servants, _emphyteutas_ (you shall presently know the meaning of this ominous word) and metayers; that is to say, persons who may cultivate only such products as their employers or landlords choose, and the latter in their greed and short-sightedness always choose that the former shall cultivate wine. The remainder, or some one hundred and seventy-five thousand, consist chiefly of small proprietors, owning three, four, five and ten acre patches of land, often intersected by other properties, and therefore not adapted for the cultivation of grain: such of the _emphyteutas_ and metayers as are practically free to cultivate what they please make up the remainder of this class.

The quantity of land devoted to grain is therefore exactly what the aristocratic land-owners choose to make it; and, never suspecting that a well-fed peasant is more efficient as a laborer than a famished one, they have made it barely enough, in good years, to keep the miserable population from entirely perishing. The product in such years is about six bushels of edible grain per head of total population, together with a little pulse and a taste of fish or bacon on rare occasions. In unfavorable years, like the present one, the product of edible grain falls to five bushels per head, and unless the government suspends the corn laws for the whole country--which since 1855 it has usually done on such occasions--famine ensues. The nation (excepting, of course, the court and aristocracy, who live in or near Lisbon and Oporto) is thus kept always at the brink of starvation, and every mishap in these artificial and tyrannical arrangements consigns fresh thousands to the grave.

The population of Portugal was the same in 1798 that it is to-day--viz., about four millions--and there has been no time between those periods when it was greater. Knowing, as we do, that the law of social progress is growth--in other words, that the condition of individual development, both physical and intellectual, is that degree of freedom which finds its expression in the increase of numbers--what does this portentous fact of a stationary population bespeak? Simply, the utmost degradation of body and mind; vice in its most hideous forms; filth, disease, unnatural crimes; a hell upon earth. These are always the characteristics of nations which have been prevented from growing. The melancholy proofs of a condition of affairs in Portugal which admits of this description shall presently be forthcoming.

Antonio de Leon Pinelo, who was one of the greatest lawyers and historians that Spain ever produced, very profoundly remarked that no man could possibly understand the history of slavery in America who had not first mastered the subject of Spanish _encomiedas_. With equal truth it may be said that the solution of Portuguese history lies in the subject of _emphyteusis_. Emphyteusis (Greek: zmphutehuis, "ingrafting," "implanting," and perhaps, metaphorically, "ameliorating") is a lease of land where the tenant agrees to improve it and pay a certain rent. The origin of this tenure is Greek, and it was probably first adopted in Rome after the conquest of the Achaean League (B.C. 146), when Greece became a Roman province. It was carried into Carthage B.C. 145, and into Spain and Portugal about B.C. 133, when those countries fell beneath the Roman arms. Whenever this occurred the first act of the conquerors was to assume the ownership of the land. They then leased it on emphyteusis, either to the original occupiers, to their own soldiers, or to settlers ("carpet-baggers"). The rent was called _vectigal_, and decurions (corporals in the army) were usually employed to collect it and administer the lands.

Syria, Greece, Carthage, and the Iberian Peninsula were the first countries to succumb to the Roman arms outside of Italy. These conquests all occurred within the space of fifty-seven years (from 190 to 133 B.C.), and this was doubtless the period when emphyteusis was first employed upon an extensive scale. Originally, the tenants were liable to have their rents increased, and to be evicted at the pleasure of the state, and thus lose the benefit of any improvements effected by them. The result was, that no improvements were effected. The forests were cut down, the orchards destroyed, the lands exhausted by incessant cropping; and by the beginning of the present era the entire coasts of the Mediterranean were exploited.

This great historical fact is replete with significance--not only to Portugal, but also to the rest of the world, even to America, which, by abandoning its public lands to the rapacity of monopolists and the vandalism of ignorant immigrants, is preparing for itself a future filled with forebodings of evil.

The ruin of the lands of Carthage, Spain, etc. eventually hastened the ruin of Italy. It put an end to the legitimate supplies of grain which those countries had been accustomed to contribute; it forced their populations to crowd into already overcrowded Italy, and increase the requirements of food in a country which had been exploited like their own, and, though not so rapidly, yet by similar means;[1] and it gave rise to the servile wars, to the most corrupt period in Roman history, to the Empire, and to the endless series of consequences in its train.

[Footnote 1: Although the various states of Italy were conquered by Rome before Greece was, it is probable that emphyteusis was not employed in those states until after the year B.C. 146--between that and B.C. 120.]

After the Western Empire had apparently fallen beneath the Northern arms--that is to say, five hundred years later--and not until then, the Roman Code ameliorated the baneful tenure of emphyteusis. A law of the emperor Zenos (A.D. 474-491) fixed whatever had theretofore been uncertain in the nature and incidents of emphyteusis. The tenant was guaranteed from increase of rent and from eviction--the alienation of the property by the state being held thenceforth to affect the quit-rent only--and finally he obtained full power to dispose of the land, which nevertheless remained subject to the quit-rent in whatever hands it might be. Before these reforms were effected, Portugal was conquered by the Visigoths, the Roman proprietors of the soil were expelled, and their laws and institutions suppressed. This occurred in the year 476. Whether emphyteusis in any form remained is not quite certain, but it seems not; and during this government, and the Moorish one which superseded it in the year 711, the Iberian Peninsula enjoyed an interval of prosperity to which it had been a stranger for ages.

In the eleventh century this happy condition of affairs was disturbed by the appearance of certain Spanish crusading knights, who, issuing from the mountainous parts of the country adjacent to their own, began to war against the Moorish authorities. In the course of a century, and with little voluntary aid from the peasants, who distrusted them and their religious pretensions and promises of advantage, they managed to acquire possession of the country. Now, what do you suppose was one of the first acts committed by these adventurers? Nothing less than the re-enactment of the odious Roman tenure of emphyteusis, and that in its most ancient and worst form--liability to increased rent and to eviction; not only this, but with certain base services combined. The wretched inhabitants were required to work so many days in the week for these lords, to break up a certain amount of waste land; to furnish so many cattle; to kill so many birds; to provide (in rural districts remote from the sea) so many salt fish; to furnish so much incense or so many porringers, iron tools, pairs of shoes, etc.

Talk of the Western Empire having "declined and fallen," as Messrs. Gibbon and Wegg put it! Why, here it was again, and with the worst of its ancient crimes inscribed upon its code of law. Emphyteusis was reintroduced into Portugal by King Diniz (Dennis) in the year 1279, and was followed by its usual effects--ruin and depopulation. In 1394 was born Prince Henry. He was the son of John I. and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and was therefore the nephew of Henry IV. of England. Perceiving and commiserating the wretchedness of the people, and casting about him for a remedy, Henry saw but one: that was departure from the land, emigration, colonization, escape from the tyranny of the soil, of nobles and of ecclesiastics--a tyranny which both his illustrious rank and his piety forbade him to oppose. Hence his intense devotion to the discovery and colonization of strange lands, which is in vain to be accounted for on the ground of a mere passion, the only one usually advanced by unthinking historians.

The results of this mania, as it was then considered, of Prince Henry are well known--the discovery of Madeira, the Azores, Senegambia, Angola, Benguela, etc., and, after Prince Henry's death, the Cape of Good Hope, Goa, Macao, the islands, etc.; all of which were colonized by Portuguese. These colonies, and the commerce which sprang up with them, afforded outlets for the downtrodden serfs of Portugal. Such was the beneficial result of this partial measure of freedom that in the course of the following two centuries Portugal became one of the leading nations of the world, with a population of 5,000,000 and a flag respected in every clime.

Unhappily, this interval of prosperity to Portugal was the cause of infinite misery to the negro race. The discoveries in Africa and Asia afforded a career to the enslaved Portuguese; yet, by leading, as they did, to the discovery of America, they were eventually the cause of the slave-trade, which without America could not have flourished. Such will ever be the result of the attempt to palliate instead of cure evil. Moreover, the discovery of America and the resulting slave-trade were the cause of Portugal's retrogression to the point whence she had started in Prince Henry's time. When gold and slaves rendered maritime discovery profitable to the aristocratic class, all the nobles went into it--not only the aristocrats of Portugal, but those also of Spain, England, France, Holland, Italy. They all went into the trade of acquiring empires, and it is not to be wondered at if in this rivalry of greed and violence Portugal, exploited and burdened with serfdom and other features of bad government at home, was distanced and overcome. Her colonies were captured and reduced by foreign enemies, or invaded and ruined by one of the several political diseases from which she had never wholly rid herself. For example, the once magnificent city of Goa, which formerly contained a population of 150,000 Christians and 50,000 Mohammedans, is now an almost deserted ruin, with but 40,000 inhabitants, _chiefly ecclesiastical_.

When Pombal assumed the reins of government in 1750 the population of Portugal had been reduced to less than 2,000,000: there was neither agriculture, manufactures, army nor navy. Perceiving this state of affairs, and recognizing the cause of it, Pombal caused the vines to be torn up by the roots and corn planted in their place. Ruffianism was crushed, the Jesuits were banished, the nobility were taught to respect the civil law, the peasantry were encouraged. After twenty-seven years of reforms and prosperity Pombal was dismissed from office and the old abuses were reinstated, among them those worst incidents of emphyteusis which had been devised by the base ring of nobles and ecclesiastics who held the land in their grasp.

These abuses remained without material change until 1832, and thus you have a complete history of emphyteusis from the first to the last day of its institution in Portugal. In truth, however, its last day has not come even yet, for many of its incidents still linger in the code of laws.

Now for its effects on the land. What growth of forest trees had followed the abolition of emphyteusis under the Gothic and Saracenic monarchs was destroyed under the government of Christian nobles, and to-day there is scarcely a tree in Portugal--the woods, including fruit and nut trees, covering less than 400,000 out of 22,000,000 acres, the entire area of the country. The destruction of the woods, to say nothing of its effects upon the rainfall, caused the top soil to be washed away, and thus impoverished the arable land, filling the rivers with earth, rendering them innavigable, and converting them from gently-flowing streams to devastating torrents, which annually bestrew the valleys and plains with sand and stones.[2] In the next place, emphyteusis has caused every kind of improvement to be avoided. The soil has been exhausted by over-cropping; public works, like roads, wells, irrigating canals, etc., have been neglected; and the numerous works left by the industrious Saracens have been allowed to go to ruin. Finally, the tenant, being placed entirely in the power of the lord, was continually kept at the point of starvation. To escape this dreadful fate he has committed every conceivable offence against the laws of Nature and humanity. Tyranny and starvation have made of him a liar, thief, smuggler, assassin, beast. The very ground is tainted with his tread, the air is redolent of his crimes.

[Footnote 2: The Mondega annually overflows its banks, changes its course and buries thousands of once fertile acres under sand and stones; the Vonga has converted the once productive land between Aveiro and Ovar into a vast morass; the Douro is periodically converted into a frightful and resistless torrent which sweeps everything before it.]

I am aware of the eminently legal, and therefore judicial, mind of Americans; therefore I shall give nothing of importance on my own testimony alone. It shall be seen what the Portuguese peasant is from the descriptions that travelers have written, and from the fragments of statistical evidence which the deeply-culpable ruling classes have permitted to be published.

But first let me describe the degree of destitution to which the peasant has been reduced, for without this destitution this criminal character would not have been his.

Baron Forrester says:[3] "The poverty of the inhabitants of the interior of Portugal is equal to that of the Irish." (This was written in 1851, immediately after the Irish famine.) "The wretchedness of their condition checks marriage and promotes clandestine intercourse." William Doria writes:[4] "The inhabitants (all ages) do not obtain half (scarcely one-third) as much as the minimum of animal food required to sustain active vitality, which is one hundred grammes, about one-fifth of a pound, per day." Marques says:[5] "The daily ration of an able-bodied man should consist of at least twelve hundred grammes, of which one-fourth (about three-fifths of a pound) should be animal food. The Portuguese soldier (much better fed than the peasant) receives but seventeen grammes (little over half an ounce) of animal food." Notwithstanding the superior food of the soldier, such is the hatred of the peasant for the aristocratic classes, in whose service the army is employed, that he will mutilate himself to escape the conscription.[6] Says Malte-Brun: "During four months of the year the inhabitants of the Algarve have little to eat but raw figs. This causes a disease called _mal de veriga_, which sweeps away numbers of the people." Says Doria: "All the women work in the fields;" and Dr. Farr[7] tells us that "when women are employed in any but domestic labors they discharge the duties of mother imperfectly, and the mortality of children is high." Says Forrester: "Leavened bread is beginning to be known in the principal cities, but not in the provinces. Gourds, cabbages and turnip-sprouts, with bread made from chestnuts (which are always wormy), form the peasant's diet." "In Algarve carob-beans are commonly roasted, ground into flour and made into bread." Says Da Silva:[8] "The growth of the peasantry is stunted by insufficient nourishment, which consists largely of chestnuts, beans and chick-peas."

[Footnote 3: _Prize Essay on Portugal_, London, 1854.]

[Footnote 4: _Parliamentary Papers_, London, 1870.]

[Footnote 5: _Estudos Estatisticos, hygienicos e administrativas sobre as doenças e a mortalidade do exercito Portuguez_, etc., by Dr. José Antonio Marques, Lisbon, 1862.]

[Footnote 6: Doria, p. 184.]

[Footnote 7: The Registrar-General of England.]

[Footnote 8: L.A. Rebello da Silva (minister of marine), _Economia. Rural_, Lisbon, 1868.]

The utmost area of land which the average Portuguese peasant can cultivate is two and a half acres: in the United States the average of cultivated land per laborer is over thirty-two acres; on prairie-land sixty acres is not uncommon. Forrester writes: "In the Alto Douro, the richest portion of the kingdom, the villages are formed of wretched hovels with unglazed windows and without chimneys. Instead of bread or the ordinary necessaries of life, one finds only filth, wretchedness and death. Emigration is the one thought of the people."

Now for the moral, intellectual and physical results of the destitution thus evinced. The work entitled _Voyage du Duc du Châtelet en Portugal_, although usually quoted under this title, was really written by M. Comartin, a royalist of La Vendée, and written during the French Revolution. If it had any bias at all, that bias was all in favor of Portugal, yet this is his description of her people: "Il est, je pense, peu de peuple plus laid que celui de Portugal. Il est petit, basané, mal conformé. L'intérieur répond, en général, assez à cette repoussante envelope, surtout à Lisbonne, où les hommes paroissent réunir tous les vices de l'âme et du corps. II y a, au reste, entre la capitale et le nord de ce royaume, une différence marquée sous ces deux rapports. Dans les provinces septentrionales, les hommes sont moins noirs et moin laids, plus francs, plus lians dans la société, bien plus braves et plus laborieux, mais encore plus asservis, s'il est possible, aux préjugés. Cette différence existe également pour les femmes; elles sont beaucoup plus blanches que celles du sud. Les Portugais, considérés en général, sont vindicatifs bas, vains, railleurs, présomptueux à l'excès, jaloux. et ignorans. Après avoir retracé les défauts que j'ai cru appercevoir en eux, je serois injuste si je me taisois sur leurs bonnes qualités. Ils sont attachés à leur patrie, amis géneréux, fidèles, sobres, charitables. Ils seroient bons Chrètiens si le fanatisme ne les aveugloit pas. Ils sont si accoutumés aux pratiques de la religion qu'ils sont plus superstitieux que dévots. Les hidalgos, ou les grands de Portugal, sont très bornés dans leur éducation, orgueilleux et insolens; vivant dans la plus grande ignorance, ils ne sortent presque jamais de leur pays pour aller voir les autres peuples." Time and changed circumstances have somewhat softened these traits, but their general correctness is still recognizable.

"Add hypocrisy to a Spaniard's vices and you have the Portuguese character," says Dr. Southey. "They are deceitful and cowardly--have no public spirit nor national character," says Semple. "The morals of both sexes are lax in the extreme; assassination is a common offence; they rank about as low in the social scale as any people of Christendom," says McCulloch. "Their songs are licentious: the national dance or the _toffa_ is so lascivious that every stranger who sees it must deplore the corruption of the people, and regret to find such exhibitions permitted, not only in the country, but in the heart of towns, and even on the stage," says Malte-Brun. "Portugal is a paradise inhabited by demons and brutes," says Madame Junot--a phrase taken probably from Byron's description of Cintra.

My countrymen will be enraged with me for thus repeating the worst that has been said about them, but I repeat it for their own benefit, like the surgeon, who, to save the patient's life, cruelly probes the wound or lays bare the corruption from which he is suffering. Moreover, I shall have still darker spots to exhibit in a national character which has been stamped with centuries of feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny.

In a country possessing a fair share of the natural resources commonly in demand a free and prosperous population will double in numbers every fifteen years, an increase of about 4-1/2 per cent. per annum compounded. The United States, a country rich in natural resources, and one whose government offers but few obstacles to freedom and individual prosperity, has doubled its population every twenty-two and a half years since 1790. This is equal to over 3 per cent. per annum. In that country the annual number of births in every 10,000 of population is 500,[9] of immigrants, 75; total increase, 575. The deaths are 250, leaving 325 in 10,000, or 3-1/2 per cent. gain as the net result of the year's growth and decay of population.

There is no reason for believing that the proportion of births in Portugal is less than it is in Germany, or even the United States: on the contrary, "in climates where the waste of human life is excessive from the combined causes of disease and poverty affecting the mass of the inhabitants, the number of births is proportionately greater than is experienced in countries more favorably circumstanced.... Population does not so much increase because more are born, as because fewer die."[10] Hence, the presumption is that the rate of births in Portugal is equal to that in Carthagena de Colombia, where it is 8 to 10 per cent., or at least that of some parts of Mexico, where it is 6.21 per cent. Yet the population of Portugal has not increased during a hundred years. What, then, has become of the 250,000 human beings annually called into existence in Portugal? One-half of them took their chances with the rest of the population, were registered at birth, died according to rule, were duly entered upon statistical tables and buried in consecrated ground: the other half were strangled by their mothers, flung into ditches, exposed to die, starved to death, assassinated in some manner. The crimes of foeticide and infanticide have become so common that there is scarcely a peasant-woman in Portugal not guilty of them, either as principal or accessory.

[Footnote 9: It is understood, of course, that the census figures of births are admittedly and grossly inaccurate.]

[Footnote 10: Porter's _Progress_, p. 21.]

Illegitimacy is more common in Portugal than in any country of Europe. This fact can be proved from a comparison of marriages, births and baptisms; but since the statistics on these subjects are defective, the better testimony is to be derived from the number of deposits at the foundling hospitals. The foundling of the house of Misericordia in Lisbon, that of the Real Casapin in Belem and the foundling at Oporto together receive nearly five thousand foundlings during the year, of whom two-thirds[11] perish in the establishments, which thus become "charnels and houses of woe." Almost every town or village in the kingdom has its _roda dos expostos_--literally, a "wheel for exposed ones"--where, upon the ringing of a bell, the children deposited in a turning-basket or wheel are passed into the interior of the establishment without inquiry. Although their term of stay is limited to a few weeks, less than one-half of them ever pass out of the establishment alive! Says Dr. T. de Carvalho: "The _roda_ is the _açouque_ ('slaughter-house') for children. It is the permanent and legal means of infanticide. _Abaixo a roda dos expostos!_"

Notwithstanding this frightful mortality, the number of infants always on hand in the foundlings of Portugal is nearly 40,000, or 1 per cent of the entire population. One-eighth of all the reported births in the kingdom become foundlings: as for the non-reported ones, their fate is known only to the recording angel. Says Claudio Adriano da Costa: "Promiscuous intercourse has become common all over the country;" and he attributes it, though I think superficially, to the "misplaced indulgence to concubinage awarded by the rodas."[12]

[Footnote 11: During the thirteen years from 1840-52 the number of children deposited in the Oporto foundling was 15,608, of whom no less than 11,310, or 72.4 per cent.--_nearly three-fourths_--died while in the hospital. Most of the remainder died during infancy after leaving the hospital.]

[Footnote 12: In some districts of Portugal the proportion of married to single persons is as 1 to 173!]

The true cause of Portuguese immorality and crime is the unequal distribution of wealth, which leaves the mass of the inhabitants a prey to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the tyranny of the powerful and wealthy and the despair of insecurity. The origin of this evil state of affairs was the tenure of emphyteusis: its active and unfeeling promoters have been always the nobility and ecclesiastics, and its only powerful enemy, the only hope of the people, the Crown.