Chapter II: Part 2

The conference has no legal authority of any kind. At the previous conferences, the conservation subject was the one chiefly thought of, and it will be brought up in the next conference. The question of what the Governors will recommend on the income-tax constitutional amendment may come up. The matter of handling extradition papers is important. Uniform State laws on matters of universal interest, school laws, road laws, tax laws, commercial paper, warehouse receipts, bills of lading, etc.; the control of corporations, of which taxation is one branch, the action of the States in regard to water-powers within the States; marriage, divorce, wills, schools, roads, are all within the range of this conference, and the agreement of all of the Governors on some of these subjects, and by many of them on any, would be of useful influence.

The meeting has further interest and importance in being for two days in touch with the National Civic Federation, which will afford all of the Governors a chance to learn what that association of many of the most prominent men of this country is doing, and get the benefit of its discussions and the pleasure of being acquainted with many leaders of thought and action in the country, who will attend its sessions.

I am sure that I speak the sentiment of all of the Governors that they do not wish any legal power or any authority except that of the weight of their opinion as chosen State officers. They only wish the benefit of discussion of important subjects interesting to all of the States, and to establish kindly and mutually helpful relations between the Governors and the Governments of the States.

EBEN S. DRAPER

Governor of Massachusetts

I believe that a meeting of Governors may accomplish much good for every section of the country. They naturally can not legislate, nor should they attempt to. They can discuss and can learn many things which are now controlled by law in different States and which would be improvements to the laws of their own States; and they can recommend to the legislatures of their own States the enactment of laws which will bring about these improvements.

These Governors will be the forty-six [now forty-eight] representative units of the States of this great nation. By coming together they will be more than ever convinced that they are integral parts of one nation, and I believe their meeting will tend to remove all notions of sectionalism and will help the patriotism and solidarity of the country.

CHARLES S. DENEEN

Governor of Illinois

The conservation of natural resources often necessitates the cooperation of neighboring States. In such cases, the discussion of proposed conservation work by the representatives of the States concerned is of great importance. It brings to the consideration of these subjects the views and opinions of those most interested and best informed in regard to the questions involved.

The same is true in relation to many subjects of State legislation in which uniformity is desirable. This is especially the case with regard to industrial legislation. The great volume of domestic business is interstate, and the industrial legislation of one State frequently affects, and sometimes fixes, industrial conditions elsewhere. An example of the advantage of cooperation of States in the amendment and revision of laws affecting industry is seen in the agreement by the commissions recently appointed by New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to investigate the subjects of employers' liability and workmen's compensation to meet for the joint discussion of these matters. The General Assembly of Illinois is now convened in extraordinary session, and has under consideration the appointment of a similar commission in order that it may meet and cooperate with the commissions of the States named.

Along these and other similar lines it seems to me that the House of Governors will be of practical advantage in the beneficial influence it will exert in the promotion of joint action where that is necessary to secure desired ends.

FRANK W. BENSON Governor of Oregon

President Roosevelt rendered the American people a great service when he invited the Governors of the various States to a conference at the White House in 1908. The subject of conservation of our natural resources received such attention from the assembled Governors that the conservation movement has spread to all parts of the country, and has gained such headway that it will be of lasting benefit to our people. This one circumstance alone proves the wisdom of the conference of Governors, and it is my earnest hope that the organization be made permanent, with annual meetings at our national capital.

Such meetings can not help but have a broadening effect upon our State Executives, for, by interchanging ideas and by learning how the governments of other States are conducted, our Governors will gain experience which ought to prove of great benefit, not only to themselves, but to the commonwealths which they represent. Matters pertaining to interstate relations, taxation, education, conservation, irrigation, waterways, uniform legislation, and the management of State institutions are among the subjects that the conference of Governors will do well to discuss; and such discussions will prove of inestimable value, not only to the people of our different States, but to our country as a whole.

The West is in the front rank of all progressive movements and welcomes the conference of Governors as a step in the right direction.

ALBERT W. GILCHRIST

Governor of Florida

I can only estimate the significance and importance of this conference of Governors by my experience from such a conference in the past. It was my good fortune to be for a week last October on the steamer excursion down the Mississippi River. The Governors held daily conferences. Several elucidated the manner in which some particular governmental problems were solved in their respective States, all of which was more or less interesting. Of the several Federal matters discussed, it was specially interesting to me to hear the various Republican Governors discussing State rights, disputing the right of interference of the General Government on such lines. It "kinder" made me smile. In formal discussions of such matters in public, in Washington, it is probable that such expressions would not be made.

The result of this conference made me feel as if I knew the Governors and the people of the various States therein represented far better than I had before. Such discussions, with the attending personal intercourse, naturally tend to give those participating in them a broader nationality.

The House of Governors will convene; there will be many pleasant social functions and many pleasant associations will be formed. Some of the Governors will speak; all of them will resolute. They will behold evidences of the greatness of our common country and the evidence of the greatness of our public men, as displayed in the rollicking debates in the House, and the "knot on the log" discussions of the Senate. Everything will be as lovely as a Christmas tree. The House will then adjourn.

HERBERT S. HADLEY

Governor of Missouri

During recent years, the development of the National idea has carried with it a marked tendency on the part of the people to look to the National Government for the correction of all evils and abuses existing in commercial, industrial, and political affairs. The importance of the State Governments in the solution of such questions has been minimized, and, in some cases, entirely overlooked, although Congress has been behind, rather than in advance of, public sentiment upon many questions of national importance. The Congressmen are elected by the people of the different Congressional Districts, and regard their most important duty as looking after the interests of their respective districts. The United States Senators are elected by the legislatures of the several States, and do not feel that sense of responsibility to the people that is incident to an election by the people. The Governors of the various States are elected by all of the people of the State, and they are more directly "tribunes of the people" than any other officials, either in our National or State Governments. These officers will thus give a correct expression of the sentiment of the people of the States upon public questions.

While these expressions of opinion will naturally vary according to the sentiments and opinions of the people of the various States represented, yet, on the whole, they will represent more of progress and more of actual contact with present-day problems than could be secured from any similar number of public officials. And the addresses and discussions will also tend to mold the opinions of the people and have a marked influence not only upon State, but also upon National legislation.

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA A.D. 1910

PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK

Few historical events have been so impressive as the sudden and complete union of the South-African States. Seldom have men's minds progressed so rapidly, their life purposes changed so completely. In 1902 England, with the aid of her African colonists in Cape Colony and Natal, was ending a bitter war, almost of extermination, against the Dutch "Boers" of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In that year the ablest and most dreaded of England's enemies in Africa was the Dutch General, Louis Botha, leader of the fiercest and most irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare against all the might of the British Empire. As one English paper dramatically phrases it: "One used to see pictures of Botha in the illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure, with rifle and bandoliers--the most dangerous of our foes. To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago. Was ever so strange a transformation, so swift an oblivion of old enmities and rancors, so rapid a growth of union and concord out of hatred and strife!"

Necessity has in a way compelled this harmony. The old issue of Boer independence being dead, new and equally vital issues confronted the South-Africans. The whites there are scarcely more than a million in number, and they dwell amid many times their number of savage blacks. They must unite or perish. Moreover, the folly and expense of maintaining four separate governments for so small a population were obvious. So was the need of uniform tariffs in a land where all sea-coast towns found their prosperity in forwarding supplies to the rich central mining regions of Kimberley and Johannesburg. Hence all earnest men of whatever previous opinion came to see the need of union. And when this union had been accomplished, Lord Gladstone, the British viceroy over South Africa, wisely selected as the fittest man for the land's first Prime Minister, General Botha. Botha has sought to unite all interests in the cabinet which he gathered around him.

The clear analysis of the new nation and its situation which follows is reproduced by permission from the _American Political Science Review_, and is from the pen of Professor Stephen Leacock, head of the department of Political Economy of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A distinguished citizen of one great British federation may well be accepted as the ablest commentator on the foundation of another.

On May 31, 1910, the Union of South Africa became an accomplished fact. The four provinces of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State (which bears again its old-time name), and the Transvaal are henceforth joined, one might almost say amalgamated, under a single government. They will bear to the central government of the British Empire the same relation as the other self-governing colonies--Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, and New Zealand. The Empire will thus assume the appearance of a central nucleus with four outlying parts corresponding to geographical and racial divisions, and forming in all a ground-plan that seems to invite a renewal of the efforts of the Imperial Federationist. To the scientific student of government the Union of South Africa is chiefly of interest for the sharp contrast it offers to the federal structure of the American, Canadian, and other systems of similar historical ground. It represents a reversion from the idea of State rights, and balanced indestructible powers and an attempt at organic union by which the constituent parts are to be more and more merged in the consolidated political unit which they combine to form.

But the Union and its making are of great interest also for the general student of politics and history, concerned rather with the development of a nationality than with the niceties of constitutional law. From this point of view the Union comes as the close of a century of strife, as the aftermath of a great war, and indicates the consummation, for the first time in history, of what appears as a solid basis of harmony between the two races in South Africa. In one shape or other union has always been the goal of South-African aspiration. It was "Union" which the "prancing proconsuls" of an earlier time--the Freres, the Shepstones, and the Lanyons--tried to force upon the Dutch. A united Africa was at once the dream of a Rhodes and (perhaps) the ambition of a Kruger. It is necessary to appreciate the strength of this desire for union on the part of both races and the intense South-African patriotism in which it rests in order to understand how the different sections and races of a country so recently locked in the death-struggle of a three years' war could be brought so rapidly into harmonious concert.

The point is well illustrated by looking at the composition of the convention, which, in its sessions at Durban, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein, put together the present constitution. South Africa, from its troubled history, has proved itself a land of strong men. But it was reserved for the recent convention to bring together within the compass of a single council-room the surviving leaders of the period of conflict to work together for the making of a united state. In looking over the list of them and reflecting on the part that they played toward one another in the past, one realizes that we have here a grim irony of history. Among them is General Louis Botha, Prime Minister at the moment of the Transvaal, and now the first prime minister of South Africa. Botha, in the days of Generals Buller and the Dugela, was the hardest fighter of the Boer Republic. Beside him in the convention was Dr. Jameson, whom Botha wanted to hang after the raid in 1896. Another member is Sir George Farrar, who was sentenced to death for complicity in the raid, and still another, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, once the secretary of the Reform League at Johannesburg and well known as the author of the "Transvaal from Within." One may mention in contrast General Jan Smuts, an ex-leader of the Boer forces, and since the war the organizing brain of the Het Volk party. There is also Mr. Merriman, a leader of the British party of opposition to the war in 1899 and since then a bitter enemy of Lord Milner and the new regime.

Yet strangely enough after some four months of session the convention accomplished the impossible by framing a constitution that met the approval of the united delegates. Of its proceedings no official journal was kept. The convention met first at Durban, October 12, 1908, where it remained throughout that month; after a fortnight's interval it met again at Capetown, and with a three weeks' interruption at Christmas continued and completed its work at the end of the first week of February. The constitution was then laid before the different colonial parliaments. In the Transvaal its acceptance was a matter of course, as the delegates of both parties had reached an agreement on its terms. The Cape Parliament passed amendments which involved giving up the scheme of proportional representation as adopted by the convention. Similar amendments were offered by the Orange River Colony in which the Dutch leader sympathized with the leader of the Afrikanderbond at the Cape in desiring to swamp out, rather than represent, minorities. In Natal, which as an ultra-British and ultra-loyal colony, was generally supposed to be in fear of union, many amendments were offered. The convention then met again at Bloemfontein, made certain changes in the draft of the constitution, and again submitted the document to the colonies. This time it was accepted. Only in Natal was it thought necessary to take a popular vote, and here, contrary to expectation, the people voted heavily in favor of union. The logic of the situation compelled it. In the history of the movement Natal was cast for the same role as Rhode Island in the making of the Federal Union of the United States of America. The other colonies, once brought together into a single system, with power to adopt arrangements in their own interests in regard to customs duties and transportation rates, sheer economic pressure would have compelled the adhesion of Natal. In the constitution now put in force in South Africa the central point of importance is that it established what is practically a unitary and not a federal government. The underlying reason for this is found in the economic circumstances of the country and in the situation in which the provinces found themselves during the years after the war. Till that event the discord of South Africa was generally thought of rather as a matter of racial rivalry and conflicting sovereignties than of simple questions of economic and material interests.

But after the conclusion of the compact of Vereiniging in 1902 it was found that many of the jealousies and difficulties of the respective communities had survived the war, and rested rather upon economic considerations than racial rivalries.

To begin with, there was the question of customs relations. The colonies were separate units, each jealous of its own industrial prosperity. Each had the right to make its own tariff, and yet the division of the country, with four different tariff areas, was obviously to its general disadvantage. Since 1903 the provinces had been held together under the Customs Union of South Africa--made by the governments of the Cape and Natal and the Crown Colony governments of the conquered provinces. This was but a makeshift arrangement, with a common tariff made by treaty, and hence rigidly unalterable, and with a pro-rata division of the proceeds.

Worse still was the railroad problem, which has been in South Africa a bone of contention ever since the opening of the mines of the Rand offered a rich prize to any port and railway that could capture the transit trade.

The essence of the situation is simple. The center of the wealth of South Africa is the Johannesburg mines. This may not be forever the case, but in the present undeveloped state of agriculture and industrial life, Johannesburg is the dominating factor of the country.

Now, Johannesburg can not feed and supply itself. It is too busy. Its one export is gold. Its quarter of a million people must be supplied from the outside. But the Transvaal is an inland country dependent on the seaports of other communities. In position Johannesburg is like the hub of a wheel from which the railways radiate as spokes to the seaports along the rim. The line from Cape Town to Johannesburg, a distance of over 700 miles, was the first completed, and until 1894 the Cape enjoyed a monopoly of carrying the whole trade of Johannesburg. But with the completion of the tunnel through the mountains at Laing's Nek the Natal government railway was able to connect with Johannesburg and the port of Durban entered into competition with the Cape Ports of Cape Town and East London over a line only 485 miles long.

Finally, the opening of the Delagoa Bay Railway in 1894 supplied Johannesburg with an access to the sea over a line 396 miles long, of which 341 was in the Transvaal itself. This last line, it should be noticed, led to a Portuguese seaport, and at the time of its building traversed nowhere British territory. Hence it came about that in the all-important matter of railroad communication the interests of the Transvaal and of the seaboard colonies were diametrically opposed.

To earn as large a revenue as possible it naturally adjusted the rates on its lines so as to penalize the freight from the colonies and favor the Delagoa Bay road. When the colonies tried in 1895 to haul freight by ox-team from their rail-head at the frontier to Johannesburg President Kruger "closed the drifts" and almost precipitated a conflict in arms. Since the war the same situation has persisted, aggravated by the completion of the harbor works and docks at Lorenzo Marques, which favors more than ever the Delagoa route. The Portuguese seaport at present receives some 67 per cent, of the traffic from the Rand, while the Cape ports, which in 1894 had 80 per cent, of the freight, now receive only n per cent.

Under Lord Milner's government the unification of the railways of the Transvaal and the Orange River colony with the Central South-African Railways amalgamated the interests of the inland colonies, but left them still opposed to those of the seaboard. The impossibility of harmonizing the situation under existing political conditions has been one of the most potent forces in creating a united government which alone could deal with the question.

An equally important factor has been the standing problem of the native races, which forms the background of South-African politics. In no civilized country is this question of such urgency. South Africa, with a white population of only 1,133,000 people, contains nearly 7,000,000 native and colored inhabitants, many of them, such as the Zulus and the Basutos, fierce, warlike tribes scarcely affected by European civilization, and wanting only arms and organization to offer a grave menace to the welfare of the white population. The Zulus, numbering a million, inhabiting a country of swamp and jungle impenetrable to European troops, have not forgotten the prowess of a Cetewayo and the victory of Isandhwana.

It may well be that some day they will try the fortune of one more general revolt before accepting the permanent over-lordship of their conquerors. Natal lives in apprehension of such a day. Throughout all South Africa, among both British and Dutch, there is a feeling that Great Britain knows nothing of the native question.

The British people see the native through the softly tinted spectacles of Exeter Hall. When they have given him a Bible and a breech-cloth they fondly fancy that he has become one of themselves, and urge that he shall enter upon his political rights. They do not know that to a savage, or a half-civilized black, a ballot-box and a voting-paper are about as comprehensible as a telescope or a pocket camera--it is just a part of the white man's magic, containing some particular kind of devil of its own. The South-Africans think that they understand the native. And the first tenet of their gospel is that he must be kept in his place. They have seen the hideous tortures and mutilations inflicted in every native war. If the native revolts they mean to shoot him into marmalade with machine guns. Such is their simple creed. And in this matter they want nothing of what Mr. Merriman recently called the "damnable interference" of the mother country. But to handle the native question there had to be created a single South-African Government competent to deal with it.

The constitution creates for South Africa a union entirely different from that of the provinces of Canada or the States of the American Republic. The government is not federal, but unitary. The provinces become areas of local governments, with local elected councils to administer them, but the South-African Parliament reigns supreme. It is to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the American constitution and by the British North America Act. There are, of course, limits to its power. In the strict sense of legal theory, the omnipotence of the British Parliament, as in the case of Canada, remains unimpaired. Nor can it alter certain things,--for example, the native franchise of the Cape, and the equal status of the two languages,--without a special majority vote. But in all the ordinary conduct of trade, industry, and economic life, its power is unhampered by constitutional limitations.

The constitution sets up as the government of South Africa a legislature of two houses--a Senate and a House of Assembly--and with it an executive of ministers on the customary tenure of cabinet government. This government, strangely enough, is to inhabit two capitals: Pretoria as the seat of the Executive Government and Cape Town as the meeting-place of the Parliament. The experiment is a novel one. The case of Simla and Calcutta, in each of which the Indian Government does its business, and on the strength of which Lord Curzon has defended the South-African plan, offers no real parallel. The truth is that in South Africa, as in Australia, it proved impossible to decide between the claims of rival cities. Cape Town is the mother city of South Africa. Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state. Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power. The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will of the parliament.

The making of the Senate demanded the gravest thought. It was desired to avoid if possible the drowsy nullity of the Canadian Upper House and the preponderating "bossiness" of the American. Nor did the example of Australia, where the Senate, elected on a "general ticket" over huge provincial areas, becomes thereby a sort of National Labor Convention, give any assistance in a positive direction. The plan adopted is to cause each present provincial parliament, and later each provincial council, to elect eight senators. The plan of election is by proportional representation, into the arithmetical juggle of which it is impossible here to enter. Eight more senators will be appointed by the Governor, making forty in all. Proportional representation was applied also in the first draft of the constitution to the election of the Assembly.

It was thought that such a plan would allow for the representation of minorities, so that both Dutch and British delegates would be returned from all parts of the country. Unhappily, the Afrikanderbond--the powerful political organization supporting Mr. Merriman, and holding the bulk of the Dutch vote at the Cape--took fright at the proposal. Even Merriman and his colleagues had to vote it down.

Without this they could not have saved the principle of "equal rights," which means the more or less equal (proportionate) representation of town and country. The towns are British and the country Dutch, so the bearing of equal rights is obvious. Proportional representation and equal rights were in the end squared off against one another.

South Africa will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British being in official use. There was no other method open. The Dutch language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four generations. It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several: the Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the "lingua franca" of South Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland. Behind this there is no national literature, and the current Dutch of Holland and its books varies some from all of them. English is already the language of commerce and convenience. The only way to keep Dutch alive is to oppose its use. Already the bitterness of the war has had this effect, and language societies are doing their best to uphold and extend the use of the ancestral language. It is with a full knowledge of this that the leaders of the British parties acquiesced in the principle of duality.

The native franchise was another difficult question. At present neither natives nor "colored men" (the South-African term for men of mixed blood) can vote in the Transvaal, the Orange River, and Natal. Nor is there the faintest possibility of the suffrage being extended to them, both the Dutch and the British being convinced that such a policy is a mistake. In the Cape natives and colored men, if possessed of the necessary property and able to write their names, are allowed to vote. The name writing is said to be a farce, the native drawing a picture of his name under guidance of his political boss. Some 20,000 natives and colored people thus vote at the Cape, and neither the Progressives nor the Bond party dared to oppose the continuance of the franchise, lest the native vote should be thrown solid against them. As a result each province will retain its own suffrage, at least until the South-African Parliament by a special majority of two-thirds in a joint session shall decide otherwise.

The future conformation of parties under the union is difficult to forecast. At present the Dutch parties--they may be called so for lack of a better word--have large majorities everywhere except in Natal. In the Transvaal General Botha's party--Het Volk, the Party of the People--is greatly in the ascendant. But it must be remembered that Het Volk numbers many British adherents. For instance, Mr. Hull, Botha's treasurer in the outgoing Government, is an old Johannesburg "reformer," of the Uitlander days, and fought against the Boers in the war. In the Orange Free State the party called the Unie (or United party) has a large majority, while at the Cape Dr. Jameson's party of progressives can make no stand against Mr. Merriman, Mr. Malan, Mr. Sauer, and the powerful organization of the Afrikanderbond.

How the new Government will be formed it is impossible to say. Botha and Merriman will, of course, constitute its leading factors. But whether they will attempt a coalition by taking in with them such men as Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and Dr. Jameson, or will prefer a more united and less universal support is still a matter of conjecture. From the outsider's point of view, a coalition of British and Dutch leaders, working together for the future welfare of a common country, would seem an auspicious opening for the new era. But it must be remembered that General Botha is under no necessity whatever to form such a coalition. If he so wishes he can easily rule the country without it as far as a parliamentary majority goes. Not long since an illustrious South-African, a visitor to Montreal, voiced the opinion that Botha's party will rule South Africa for twenty years undisturbed. But it is impossible to do more than conjecture what will happen. _Ex Africa semper quid novi_.

Most important of all is the altered relation in which South Africa will now stand to the British Empire.

The Imperial Government may now be said to evacuate South Africa, and to leave it to the control of its own people. It is true that for the time being the Imperial Government will continue to control the native protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. But the Constitution provides for the future transfer of these to the administration of a commission appointed by the colonial Government. Provision is also made for the future inclusion of Rhodesia within the Union. South Africa will therefore find itself on practically the same footing as Canada or Australia within the British Empire. What its future fate there will be no man can yet foretell. In South Africa, as in the other Dominions, an intense feeling of local patriotism and "colonial nationalism" will be matched against the historic force and the practical advantages of the Imperial connection. Even in Canada, there is no use in denying it, there are powerful forces which, if unchecked, would carry us to an ultimate independence. Still more is this the case in South Africa.

It is a land of bitter memories. The little people that fought for their republics against a world in arms have not so soon forgotten. It is idle for us in the other parts of the Empire to suppose that the bitter memory of the conflict has yet passed, that the Dutch have forgotten the independence for which they fought, the Vier Klur flag that is hidden in their garrets still, and the twenty thousand women and children that lie buried in South Africa as the harvest of the conqueror. If South Africa is to stay in the Empire it will have to be because the Empire will be made such that neither South Africa nor any other of the dominions would wish to leave it. For this, much has already been done. The liberation of the Transvaal and Orange River from the thraldom of their Crown Colony Government, and the frank acceptance of the Union Constitution by the British Government are the first steps in this direction. Meantime that future of South Africa, as of all the Empire, lies behind a veil.

PORTUGAL BECOMES A REPUBLIC A.D. 1910

WILLIAM ARCHER

The wave of democratic revolt which had swept over Europe during the first decade of the twentieth century was continued in 1910 by the revolution in Portugal. This, as the result of long secret planning, burst forth suddenly before dawn on the morning of October 4th. Before nightfall the revolution was accomplished and the young king, Manuel, was a fugitive from his country.

The change had been long foreseen. The selfishness and blindness of the Portuguese monarchs and their supporters had been such as to make rebellion inevitable, and its ultimate success certain. Mr. William Archer, the noted English journalist, who was sent post-haste to watch the progress of the revolution, could not reach the scene before the brief tumult was at an end; but he here gives a picture of the joyous celebration of freedom that followed, and then traces with power and historic accuracy the causes and conduct of the dramatic scene which has added Portugal to the ever-growing list of Republics.

When the poet Wordsworth and his friend Jones landed at Calais in 1790 they found

"France standing on the top of golden years
And human nature seeming born again."

Not once, but fifty times, in Portugal these lines came back to my mind. The parallel, it may be said, is an ominous one, in view of subsequent manifestations of the reborn French human nature. But there is a world of difference between Portugal and France, between the House of Braganza and the House of Bourbon.

It was nearly one in the morning when my train from Badajoz drew into the Rocio station at Lisbon; yet I had no sooner passed the barrier than I heard a band in the great hall of the station strike up an unfamiliar but not unpleasing air, the rhythm of which plainly announced it to be a national anthem--a conjecture confirmed by a wild burst of cheering at the close. The reason of this midnight demonstration I never ascertained; but, indeed, no one in Lisbon asks for a reason for striking up "A Portugueza," the new patriotic song. Before twenty-four hours had passed I was perfectly familiar with its rather plaintive than martial strains, suited, no doubt, to the sentimental character of the people. An American friend, who arrived a day or two after me, made acquaintance with "A Portugueza" even more immediately than I did. Soon after passing the frontier he fell into conversation with a Portuguese fellow traveler, who, in the course of ten minutes or so, asked him whether he would like to hear the new national anthem, and then and there sang it to him, amid great applause from the other occupants of the compartment. In the cafés and theaters of Lisbon "A Portugueza" may break out at any moment, without any apparent provocation, and you must, of course, stand up and uncover; but there is in some quarters a movement of protest against these observances as savoring of monarchical flunkyism. When I left Lisbon at half-past seven A.M. there was no demonstration such as had greeted my arrival; but at the first halting-place a man stepped out from a little crowd on the platform and shouted "Viva Machado dos Santos! Viva a Republica Portugueza!"--and I found that the compartment adjoining my own was illumined by the presence of the bright particular star of the revolt. At the next station--Torres Vedras of historic fame--the platform was crowded and scores of red and green flags were waving. As the train steamed in, two bands struck up "A Portugueza," and as one had about two minutes' start of the other, the effect was more patriotic than harmonious. The hero had no sooner alighted than he was lifted shoulder-high by the crowd, and carried in triumph from the station, amid the blaring of the bands and the crackling of innumerable little detonators, which here enter freely into the ritual of rejoicing. Next morning I read in the papers a full account of the "Apoteose" of Machado dos Santos, which seems to have kept Torres Vedras busy and happy all day long.

One can not but smile at such simple-minded ebullitions of feeling; yet I would by no means be understood to laugh at them. On the contrary, they are so manifestly spontaneous and sincere as to be really touching. Whatever may be the future of the Portuguese Republic, it has given the nation some weeks of unalloyed happiness. And amid all the shouting and waving of flags, all the manifold "homages" to this hero and to that, there was not the slightest trace of rowdyism or of "mafficking." I could not think without some humiliation of the contrast between a Lisbon and a London crowd. It really seemed as though happiness had ennobled the man in the street. I am assured that on the day of the public funeral of Dr. Bombarda and Admiral dos Reis, though the crowd was enormous and the police had retired into private life, there was not the smallest approach to disorder. The police--formerly the sworn enemies of the populace--had been reinstated at the time of my visit, without their swords and pistols; but they seemed to have little to do. That Lisbon had become a strictly virtuous city it would be too much to affirm, but I believe that crime actually diminished after the revolution. It seemed as though the nation had awakened from a nightmare to a sunrise of health and hope.

And the nightmare took the form of a poor bewildered boy, guilty only of having been thrust, without a spark of genius, into a situation which only genius could have saved. In that surface aspect of the case there is an almost ludicrous disproportion between cause and effect. But it is not what the young King was that matters--it is what he stood for. Let us look a little below the surface--even, if we can, into the soul of the people.

Portugal is a small nation with a great history; and the pride of a small nation which has anything to be proud of is apt to amount to a passion. It is all the more sensitive because it can not swell and harden into arrogance. It is all the more alert because the great nations, in their arrogance, are apt to ignore it.

What are the main sources of Portugal's pride? They are two: her national independence and her achievements in discovery and colonization.

A small country, with no very clear natural frontier, she has maintained her independence under the very shadow of a far larger and at one time an enormously preponderant Power. Portugal was Portugal long before Spain was Spain. It had its Alfred the Great in Alfonso Henriques (born 1111--a memorable date in two senses), who drove back the Moors as Alfred drove back the Danes. He founded a dynasty of able and energetic kings, which, however, degenerated, as dynasties will, until a vain weakling, Ferdinand the Handsome, did his best to wreck the fortunes of the country. On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five hundred English archers, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spaniards at Aljubarrota, the Portuguese Bannockburn. John of Aviz, known as the Great, married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt; and from this union sprang a line of princes and kings under whom Portugal became one of the leading nations of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of John the Great, devoted his life to the furthering of maritime adventure and discovery. Like England's First Lords of the Admiralty, he was a navigator who did not navigate; but it was unquestionably owing to the impulse he gave to Portuguese enterprise that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India and Pedro Alvarez Cabral secured for his country the giant colony of Brazil. Angola, Mozambique, Diu, Goa, Macao--these names mean as much for Portugal as Havana, Cartagena, Mexico, and Lima, for Spain. The sixteenth century was the "heroic" age of Portuguese history, and the "heroes"--notably the Viceroys of Portuguese India--were, in fact, a race of fine soldiers and administrators. No nation, moreover, possesses more conspicuous and splendid memorials of its golden age. It was literally "golden," for Emmanuel the Fortunate, who reaped the harvest sown by Henry the Navigator, was the wealthiest monarch in Europe, and gave his name to the "Emmanueline" style of architecture, a florid Gothic which achieves miracles of ostentation and sometimes of beauty. As the glorious pile of Batalha commemorates the victory of Aljubarrota, so the splendid church and monastery of Belem mark the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de Camoens. If Spenser, instead of losing himself in mazes of allegoric romance, had sung of Crécy and Agincourt, of Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, he might have given us a national epic in the same sense in which the term applies to _The Lusiads_. With such a history, so written in stone and song, what wonder if pride of race is one of the mainsprings of Portuguese character!

But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques, dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir. Then, for sixty years, not by conquest, but by intrigue, Portugal passed under the sway of Spain, and lost to the enemies of Spain--that is to say, to England and Holland--a large part of her colonial empire. At last, in 1640, a well-planned and daring revolution expelled the Spanish intruders, and placed on the throne John, Duke of Braganza. As the house of Aviz was an illegitimate branch of the stock of Affonso Henriques, so the Braganzas were an illegitimate branch of the House of Aviz, with none of the Plantagenet blood in them. Only one prince of the line, Pedro II., can be said to have attained anything like greatness. Another, Joseph, had the sense to give a free hand to an able, if despotic, minister, the Marquis of Pombal. But, on the whole, the history of the Braganza rule was one of steady decadence, until the second half of the nineteenth century found the country one of the most backward in Europe.

Nor was there any comfort to be found in the economic aspect of the case. A country of glorious fertility and ideal climatic conditions, inhabited by an industrious peasantry, Portugal was nevertheless so poor that much of its remaining strength was year by year being drained away by emigration. The public debt was almost as heavy per head of population as that of England. Taxation was crushing. The barest necessaries of life were subject to heavy imposts. Protection protected, not industries, but monopolies and vested interests.

In short, the material condition of the country was as distressing as its spiritual state to any one with the smallest sense of enlightened patriotism.

King Charles I.--name of evil omen!--ascended the throne in 1889. His situation was not wholly unlike that of the English Charles I., inasmuch as--though he had not the insight to perceive it--his lot was cast in times when Portugal was outgrowing the traditions and methods of his family. Representative government, as it had shaped itself since 1852, was a fraud and a farce. To every municipality a Government administrator was attached (at an annual cost to the country of something like £70,000), whose business it was to "work" the elections in concert with the local _caciques_ or bosses. Thus, except in the great towns, the Government candidate was always returned. The efficacy of the system may be judged from the fact that in a country which was at heart Republican, as events have amply shown, the Republican party never had more than fourteen representatives in a chamber of about 150. For the rest, the Monarchical parties, "Regeneradores" and "Progresistas," arranged between them a fair partition of the loaves and fishes. This "rotative" system, as it is called, is in effect that which prevails, or has prevailed, in Spain; but it was perfected in Portugal by a device which enabled Ministers, in stepping out of office under the crown, to step into well-paid posts in financial institutions, more or less associated with the State. Anything like real progress was manifestly impossible under so rotten a system; and with this system the Monarchy was identified.

Then came the scandal of the _adeantamentos_, or illegal advances made to the King, beyond the sums voted in the civil list. It is only fair to remember that the king of a poor country is nowadays in a very uncomfortable position, more especially if the poor country has once been immensely rich. The expenses of royalty, like those of all other professions, have enormously increased of late years; and a petty king who is to rub shoulders with emperors is very much in the position of a man with £2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount." But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. Easy-going and self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing _in forma pauperis_ among the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in millions of pounds.

These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and administration, rendered even the _cacique_-chosen Cortes unruly, and our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a "thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary _gâchis_. He found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious, arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,' replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the field of battle.

Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As regards the _adeantamentos_, Franco's declared policy was to make a clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal, and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable. Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than those which Morote then recorded in the _Heraldo_ of Madrid. Said Bernardino Machado:

"The Republic is the fatherland organized for its prosperity.... I believe in the moral forces of Portugal, which are carrying us directly toward the new order of things.... We shall triumph because the right is on our side, and the moral idealism; peacefully if we can, and I think it pretty sure that we can, since no public force can stop a nation on the march."

Said Guerra Junqueiro, the leading poet of the day: "Within two years there will be no Braganzas or there will be no Portugal....The revolution, when it comes, will be a question of hours, and it will be almost bloodless."

I could cite many other deliverances to the same effect, but one must suffice. Theophilo Braga, the "grand old man" of Portugal, said: "To stimulate the faith, conscience, will, and revolutionary energies of the country, I have imposed on myself a plan of work, and a mandate not to die until I see it accomplished."

The Paris _Temps_ of November 14, 1907, published an interview with Dom Carlos which embittered feeling and alienated many of his supporters. "Everything is quiet in Lisbon," declared the King, echoing another historic phase: "Only the politicasters are agitating themselves.... It was necessary that the _gâchis_--there is no other word for it--should one day come to an end.... I required an undaunted will which should be equal to the task of carrying my ideas to a happy conclusion.... I am entirely satisfied with M. Franco. _Ça marche_. And it will continue; it must continue for the good of the country.... In no country can you make a revolution without the army. Well, the Portuguese Army is faithful to its King, and I shall always have it at my side.... I have no shadow of doubt of its fidelity." Poor Charles the First!

At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity. After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace. In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praça do Comercio, stood two men named Buiça and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks. They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel. Both the assassins were killed on the spot.