POLITICS AND THE PRESS
[Sidenote: The Political Press.]
It is the misfortune of existing Portuguese politics and of the
Portuguese Press that the party-leader is often a newspaper-editor.
If we imagine Mr. Balfour as Leader of the Conservatives and editor
and leader-writer of the _Morning Post_, Mr. Asquith as Leader of the
Liberals and editor of the _Westminster Gazette_, Mr. Lloyd George at
the _Daily Chronicle_, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald at a paper of his own, we
have some idea on a large scale of the state of affairs in Portugal. “Men
are rarely good judges in their own interests,” one of the characters in
Francisco de Sá de Miranda’s play, _Os Vilhalpandos_, informs us. The
Latin temperament, with its many merits and excellences, its logical and
intelligent outlook, rarely has the quality of objective justice. It is
too fervent and impassioned, loves and hates too ardently to pause to
consider coldly the fairness of a matter. All the more welcome would be
some independent organs in the Lisbon Press, some steadying element, some
kind of Portuguese _Spectator_. As to partisan newspapers, there are far
too many of them.
[Sidenote: Journalism.]
At Lisbon alone—if we include all kinds and descriptions of periodical
publications—there are upwards of a hundred, and the majority of these
are political. There are too many writers, who drift from a Coimbra
degree into journalism at Lisbon, and who consider it far less important
to write good Portuguese than to drag in some French or Latin quotation
in and out of season, and most often misspelt.
[Illustration: THE WASHING PLACE, COIMBRA
[_See p. 99_]
[Sidenote: Portuguese and Portugibberish.]
It is worth while to consider the sad case of the Portuguese language,
since it is or might be one of the finest languages in Europe. It is
to be hoped that the Bible Society will distribute far and wide the
Portuguese translation of the Bible by João Ferreira d’Almeida among
all, peasants and others, who can read. It may not convert them to
Protestantism, but will lay the basis for a revival of the Portuguese
language, murdered daily in the Press. It is not only the Latin tags
that are misspelt; in spite of the intricate official rules drawn up
for Portuguese spelling, it remains unfixed, and words are sometimes
transformed almost out of recognition. _E_, being often pronounced as
_i_, becomes so written, _s_ takes the place of _c_, and when these and
other errors combine the result is remarkable; for instance, “scepticism”
becomes _siticismo_, “miscellany” _mecellanea_, and so forth. The
most minute rules of Portuguese orthography were drawn up after the
Revolution. They went so far as to forbid you to write Sarah, while
permitting _ah_ and _oh_, with final H(_aga_). The confusion has only
become worse confounded.
[Sidenote: Polysyllables.]
The Portuguese language as spoken in the provinces and by the peasants
is far clearer and more attractive than as it is often spoken at Lisbon.
As to the written language, it is too often debased by Gallicisms and
by sesquipedalian words. It appears to shun directness like the plague.
A “large crowd” becomes an “innumerable multitude,” a “fine view” is
an “admirable panorama,” a horse is a solipede, a dog is _um exemplar
canino_ (_O Seculo_, 21st June, 1915). The terse phrase, “Wait and see,”
translated into modern Portuguese, would become “Will you have the
goodness to adopt an attitude of expectation and devote yourself to a
consideration of the progress of events.” A sentence is often a great
wave of abstract terms which leaves the reader stunned and breathless.
Take the following from the _Parnasso Portuguez Moderno_ (Lisbon, 1877):
“A par das grandes descobertas scientificas do nosso seculo que pela via
inductiva conduziram á demonstração integral dos phenomenos cosmicos pelo
movimento etherodynamico.” All that this really means is “Beside the
great discoveries made by science in our time in cosmic phenomena.” Or
attempt to extract the character of the unfortunate Luis de Camões from
this: “A forma da genialidade de Camões não foi a de uma sobrexcitação
da sensibilidade mantendo em estado morbido os elementos nervosos; a
boa cultura synthetica, completandose pela synessia da sua vida em
diversissimos meios teve um objectivo para onde convergiram todas as
assimilisações mentaes e adaptações praticas.” In a single page of one
recent novel occur no less than fourteen abstract words ending in _-ade_.
[Sidenote: True Portuguese.]
Yet there is ample evidence to show that Portuguese at its best is
well qualified to rival or even excel Castilian. It has by nature that
softness and pliancy which the Castilian only attains exceptionally,
at the hands of genius, and in Portuguese it is for the master hand to
give this language that force and concision which comes naturally to the
Castilian, and which was once a characteristic of Portuguese also. The
saying, “Fortune usually kicks a man when he’s down,” is expressed in
Portuguese in three words, “_Sobre queda coices_”—“after fall kicks,”
and innumerable words are in Portuguese reduced to half the length they
have in Latin and in other modern Romance languages. _Solus_, alone,
becomes _só_; _dolor_, grief, _dôr_, _major môr_. As to its softness,
delightful words such as _chuva_, rain, and all those words expressive of
bittersweet regret and similar feelings—_saudade_, _saudoso_, _meigo_,
_mavioso_—occur continually. But the tendency has been always to praise
and exaggerate this softness, whereas it needs a corrective of terseness
if it is not to become excessive. Even occasional harshnesses of
construction are not amiss. The uglinesses and thicknesses of Portuguese
pronunciation and spelling are of comparatively modern growth. Open some
folio of the sixteenth century, and you will find not the nasal _ão_, but
the straightforward _am_, not _prompto_ but _pronto_, not _lucta_ but
_luta_, not _tracto_ but _trato_—everything clearer and more direct. And
as the scholar goes to his books the politician must turn to the people,
not the people to which the Lisbon political press addresses itself, but
the inhabitants of the remote provinces which have remained as stationary
as old folios in a convent library, and preserve many uncorrupted
excellences of language and custom. And indeed this is no matter of vain
pedantry: for unless the language, and the citizens too, hark back to the
sixteenth century, they are doomed to perish. No great literature can
come of Portuguese as it is at present too often spoken and written, and
without a literature a nation dwindles and dies. (Witness the Basques,
who have the vigour of six ordinary nations, and are losing their
language and nationality because they have never given much attention to
the written word, content with their splendid old games and customs.)
It is a pity that the passion for politics in Portugal has not inspired
its devotees with nobler prose; though there are some journalists who
are also men of letters, the majority of articles published are scarcely
written in anything worthy of the name of prose, and this is the more
regrettable as politics in Portugal stretches its net so wide, and
thousands read the newspaper who have never opened a book.
[Sidenote: The Political Octopus.]
Nearly a century ago, that is at about the time of the introduction into
Portugal of constitutional government, a Portuguese writer proposed that
the vanity of his countrymen should be turned to account by bestowing
such titles as Viscount and Baron on rich persons according as they
built a large or small number of houses, a large or small village in
the more deserted parts of the country. Succeeding governments seemed
to adopt the suggestion, only the titles were given systematically to
those rich _brazileiros_ and others who paid in so many _contos_ to
the public exchequer or who helped by their local influence to win an
election. Thus, politics became more and more a dreadful octopus, its
tentacles closing round and crushing the life out of the nation. Even
those who do not know a ballot-box from a sheep-trough or a Minister from
a counter-jumper, find themselves compelled to take part in politics.
They may gain nothing from it, but they cannot escape it. And if a man
wishes to get anything done, if he desires a road mended, a church built,
a son placed, a title conferred, an opponent imprisoned, it is possible
to arrange the matter, by means of politics. As to Lisbon, of course, it
would not be Lisbon were it not for politics. Alas for the clubs of the
Chiado, the _cafés_ of the Rocio, the arcades of Black House Square, and
even the shops, the streets, the _praças_, where men do gather together
and gossip, were there not a new government to discuss every three or
four months. The country may be driven to the dogs by these continual
changes, but the politicians, amateur and professional, are in clover.
And indeed this soft air and warm sun needs a spice of _maledicencia_
and criticism of politicians. In England the climate affords an abundant
topic, in Portugal the days are often monotonously beautiful, sometimes
monotonously rainy, so that whereas people in England discuss a late fall
of snow or an early frost, in Portugal they pass the time over the fall
of the Government or a partial ministerial crisis. A wonderful amount
of excellent wit and intelligence is expended over the subject, and it
is extraordinary how every shopkeeper even, every newspaper-boy almost,
has his political views, his favourite politician. Men whose education
consists in being able to spell out the newspaper of their predilection
will discuss the political situation with considerable eloquence and
knowledge. Each political group counts as many real adherents as may fit
into a not very large hall, and each politician who takes office is the
target at which all the other political groups aim the shafts of their
ridicule.
[Sidenote: Political Groups.]
Nowhere have political parties been more numerous and more picturesque
in their names and their theories than in Spain and Portugal. In Spain
at a recent general election members of nearly a dozen political
parties were returned to Parliament, and in Portugal since the
introduction of constitutional government there have been _Cartistas_
and _Septembristas_, _Regeneradores_, _Dissidentes_, _Reformistas_,
_Nacionalistas_, _Progressistas_, and since the Revolution of 1910,
_Evolucionistas_, _Independentes_, _Reformistas_, _Integralistas_,
_Unionistas_, and _Democratas_. These are but a few of the many
parties which have misinterpreted and abused the Parliamentary system
in Portugal, some of them with names and actions as vague as Emilio
Castelar’s celebrated _Posibilistas_. To take the present time there
are the “Democrats” under the leadership of Dr. Affonso Augusto da
Costa (their chief newspaper organs are _O Mundo_, _A Montanha_ and _A
Patria_), the “Evolutionists” under the leadership of Dr. José Antonio de
Almeida (organ, _A Republica_), the “Unionists,” led by Dr. Manuel Brito
Camacho (_A Lucta_), the “Independents” or _Reformistas_ under Senhor
Machado Santos (_O Intransigente_). The Democrats consider themselves the
direct continuation of the original Republican party, and thus in a sense
the only legitimate party, the others having branched off from it since
the Revolution. These four are the definitely constituted Republican
parties, besides which there are the more advanced Radical Republicans,
the Syndicalists (_O Sindicalista_), Socialists (_O Socialista_), etc.
There are also the Miguelists (_A Nação_), Manuelists (_O Dia_), and
a Royalist party which may be called Sebastianist, and which vaguely
desires the return of former conditions without having any very definite
political creed. It must be remembered that there are but a million
and a half Portuguese who can read and write, and that the Republic
has disfranchised the remaining 4,500,000. But even of the 1,500,000
the majority take no active part in politics. The parties are in fact
small personal groups collecting round any politician of intelligence
or energy, or who knows the political ropes and the art of placing or
promising to place his friends, and as a consequence they are too much
inclined to give prominence to small personal questions and storms in
the Lisbon teacup. The followers of the various parties are also known
as _Affonsistas_, _Almeidistas_, _Camachistas_, as before the Revolution
there were _Franquistas_, _Henriquistas_, _Teixeiristas_, etc.
[Sidenote: Ministries and Elections.]
These groups bicker with all the venom of personal hatred amid the most
profound indifference of the country. The formation of a new party or a
new ministry has nothing to do with the country. Even were elections in
Portugal to be regarded as a sign of the people’s will, there had been
but one general election since the Revolution at a time when the number
of governments had to be counted on the fingers of both hands, and the
Ministers of Finance on fingers and toes. So a new party will spring
up in Lisbon and have little root in the country outside Lisbon. The
attitude of the people towards all these politicians is one of profound
distrust. They give them credit for sufficient intelligence to understand
their own interests, but not sufficient to understand the interests of
the country. A peasant in one of Eça de Queiroz’ novels is of opinion
that _quem manda lucra_, and this melancholy sentiment (that he who has
charge of affairs feathers his nest) may be heard at the present day.
It is not said in anger, but as the expression of a very natural fact.
They would be surprised if it were otherwise. While the unfortunate
Minister of Finance is gazing at an empty exchequer, they imagine him
plunging both hands in a rich store for himself and his friends. And in
a sense they are right. It is expected of ministers in office to help
their friends, in their business affairs, and to find places for their
political followers somewhere in that huge bureaucracy which has been the
bane of Portugal since the sixteenth century. And, of course, each new
government appoints new civil governors and new mayors and usually many
other officials in the provinces.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ALMOUROL
[_See p. 100_]
[Sidenote: Brief Ministries.]
When it is remembered that Portugal has had some twenty governments
during the life of a single government in England, it will be readily
understood what disastrous confusion, what expense and waste, result,
not to speak of personal ambitions kept continually at fever heat, on
the watch and intriguing for some official post, and the large army of
ex-officials disinclined or unable to find other employment. The list
of Governments in the seven years 1908-15 is—save omissions—as follows:
(1) João Franco, (2) Amaral, (3) Henriques, (4) Telles, (5) Lima, (6)
Beirão, (7) Teixeira de Sousa, (8) Provisional Government, (9) João
Chagas, (10) Vasconcellos, (11), Duarte Leite, (12) Costa, (13) Machado,
(14) Azevedo, (15) Pimenta de Castro, (16) Revolutionary Government (João
Chagas), (17) José de Castro, (18) José de Castro with new ministry. The
first regular Republican Parliament (1911-14) saw the rise and fall of
seven governments, and the rise and fall of each of them made as little
commotion in the country (apart from the habitual discussions of the
_cafés_ and political clubs in the towns) as a pebble thrown into the
Atlantic.
[Sidenote: Making the Elections.]
How can this be so, it may be asked, with the deputies of the nation
sitting in Parliament? The answer is that elections in Portugal are
a peculiar practice. The phrase “The Government makes the elections”
obtains in Portugal as in Spain, and of itself speaks volumes. The
Government is first appointed by some personal intrigue in Lisbon, with
or without reference, or with a purely formal reference to the strength
of the various parties in Parliament. It then proceeds to remodel the
political framework throughout the country by appointing civil governors,
mayors, etc., of its own political views. Then, when it is well seated in
the saddle, it holds the elections. It is an unknown thing for a majority
to be returned other than of the supporters of the Government. This
would be discouraging to the electors (and also it would be impossible)
if they took any interest in the results, but the results are always a
foregone conclusion except in matters of detail. Senhor Affonso Costa
after he had as Premier obtained thirty-four out of thirty-seven seats
in a partial election, remarked in a speech to his party, the Democrats:
“The country will give us more next time.” That is, the Democrat
Government which had made the election was scarcely content to have
obtained all except two or three seats, but better luck next time: one
must not ask too much. “For the first time,” said Senhor Bernardino
Machado after the Revolution, “there is going to be in this country an
election without the intervention of the Government.” “The whole country
must be fully convinced that it is not the Government that makes the
Constituent Assembly” (from a speech delivered in December, 1910). Of
course the thing was impossible, the country had not been brought up to
use its own discretion at an election. At a meeting of the Provisional
Government and the Directory of the Republican Party held in the very
month in which these words were spoken and attended by Senhor Bernardino
Machado who had spoken them, it was resolved to “bring to bear all the
forces of the party without exception in their official organisation in
order thus to prevent the adversaries of the Republic from introducing
themselves disguisedly into the politics of the nation to disturb it.”
Openly, of course, no Royalist would dare to present himself after such
an invitation or warning. Yet the question has sometimes been put with a
spider-and-fly blandness of hypocrisy: “Why do the Royalists not present
themselves for election instead of conspiring?” although, with organised
groups employed for “the defence of the Republic,” the Royalists who did
so would have been more likely to see the inside of the _Penitenciaria_
than of the House of Parliament. Sincere Republicans admit that the
first Republican Parliament was artificially fabricated in Lisbon, and
it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise: generations must pass
before a really representative assembly can exist in Portugal. Meanwhile,
_fit, non nascitur_. A candid member of the majority in the Chamber of
Deputies addressed the little shrivelled minority in 1911 with the words:
“Vocês, se vieram á Camara, foi porque nós quizemos” (“You are only
here on sufferance”). In 1907 Senhor João Chagas was exclaiming against
the fictions, lies, fraud, mockery of the elections: “In Portugal the
Government makes the elections.... In our country it is not the people
that elects its representatives: it is the Civil Governors and the
Mayors.”
[Sidenote: Centralisation.]
His words are still applicable, and recent years have fastened even more
closely upon the country that political centralisation originally derived
from Napoleon’s system, and which gives excellent results only so long
as an administrative genius is at the head of affairs. The country is
more and more a motionless and paralysed victim in the strait-waistcoat
of an administration which is little but politics, and the cost of which
exceeds, relatively, even that of France. The Revolution brought the
charge of even greater interference of politics, otherwise the political
system has remained much as before. _Leges non animam mutant._ The new
electoral law has been described even by Republicans as being drawn up on
the lines of the old.
[Sidenote: Rotativism.]
_O Seculo_ in a leading article said (5th November, 1911): “We must
confess that the transformation of the old methods has not attained the
required extent. There seems to be a wish to continue a life of personal
politics.” The famous rotativism of the Monarchy, by which parties
succeeded one another to power without any reference to the country, and
with but little reference to its nominal representatives in Parliament,
did not cease with the Revolution. “Nefarious rotativism is still with
us,” said _O Seculo_ a year later.
[Sidenote: Sincere Republicans.]
_A Republica_, a year later again (18th October, 1912) remarked in
a leading article: “The truth is that, in two years of Republic,
political cabals, persecutions, the boldness of the incompetent, the
unscrupulousness of the ambitious, the indiscipline of nearly everyone,
and the cowardice of the greater number, have prevented the Republic
from entering frankly upon a system of careful administration.... We are
continuing the system of mere words which was our glory in opposition but
is our disgrace in power.” And a little later (24th March, 1913): “The
country is tired. It is tired especially of the enormous lie that we have
given it, as it looks upon a Republic which taxes arbitrarily, arrests
and persecutes arbitrarily, governs and administers arbitrarily.” “We are
living in anarchy as regards administration,” said Dr. Brito Canacho in
_A Lucta_ a month later. And Senhor Machado Santos, one of the founders
of the Republic, soon found that the Republic did not answer to his
dreams, and was not slow to say so in his newspaper, _O Intransigente_:
“The Republic is very different from what the people had imagined, and
as a result the majority has relapsed into indifference, while others,
passing the limits of all reason, beat the record of petty and passionate
politics” (3rd November, 1911). “Politics under the Monarchy brought
the Portuguese nation to ruin, and politics under the Republic instead
of being completely different, has adopted the old methods,” and “in
fourteen months has done more harm than fourteen years of politics during
the Monarchy” (13th December, 1911).
[Sidenote: Disillusion.]
The peasants had remained indifferent from the first, where they were
not secretly hostile to the Republic, but the workmen of the towns, or
more accurately, of Lisbon, were bitterly disappointed. They noted “the
enormous difference” between the words and deeds of the Republicans
and that “everything is now sacrificed to the creeping politics of the
_bourgeois_, who above the interests of the country set the ambitions
of their politicians” (_A Voz do Operario_, 1st December, 1912). The
Socialists reserved for themselves the right to “adopt the revolutionary
methods so freely advocated formerly by the Republicans.”
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, VILLA REAL
[_See p. 101_]
[Sidenote: Remedies.]
It will be seen from the above quotations that Republicans have
acknowledged that politics before the Revolution and politics after
the Revolution were as much alike as the names of Muppim and Huppim,
those sons of Benjamin. Sincere Republicans admit it; it is more
difficult to find a remedy. When education has done its work these
party groups may possibly, no doubt, broaden out into political parties
with real root in the country, but it will be a process of centuries.
And meanwhile, unfortunately, the Republicans, dissatisfied with the
results of the Revolution, have recourse to a different remedy—more
revolution—and try to cure themselves with a hair of the dog that has
bitten them. Decentralisation, of course, is incompatible with the
government by personal groups at Lisbon in the name of the nation. The
new administrative code, if it is willing to take power from the mayors,
is not willing to give it to the municipal bodies. Whatever authority is
taken from the mayors is given not to locally elected corporations, but
to other officials, mere instruments and offshoots of the central power.
And indeed Portugal is scarcely ready yet for local autonomy. It is not
ready for the parliamentary system, and the scrupulous care with which it
and all constitutional forms are observed sometimes increases instead of
diminishes the difficulty of a situation. The hope is that by maintaining
the forms strictly, they will gradually become a living system instead
of an empty framework, but that hope is indefinitely deferred owing
to the number of political groups and the virulence of their personal
animosities and ambitions.
[Sidenote: Party Politics.]
Two great parties, instead of a number of personal groups, might yet
succeed in extending their influence in the country, were they to adopt
simple, practical programmes. But it is hopeless to expect that a
programme, however simple, will be carried out so long as there are three
or four Ministries to the year. Six or seven years should be the average
length of a government, and the elections should be held at the end of
that time, not at the beginning of its career: that is, the Government
should ask the country to keep it in office if satisfied with what it has
achieved, not merely inform the country that it has achieved its object
of establishing itself in power. It was a brave and excellent precept of
the late Spanish Premier, Señor Canalejas, whose assassination was so
heavy a loss to Spanish politics, when he said: “I mean to remain in
office a long time” (_Yo me propongo seguir mucho tiempo en mi puesto_),
and the most praiseworthy achievement of Dr. Affonso Costa as Premier was
that he did in the face of attacks from all sides and every criticism,
succeed in remaining in office without a single change of Minister (one
does not trouble to knock down puppets) for a whole year. Perhaps some
more conciliatory Premier, who is not a mere party politician, with power
based precariously in demagogy, may yet continue in office for five.
It would make politics duller, but the country would gain undoubtedly.
A Liberal and a Conservative Government succeeding one another at long
intervals, and really making some effort to interest the people and base
their authority in the will of the people, must be the aim of Portuguese
politics for the present. Then in a century or two, when education has
become general and communications have improved, it will be discovered
that Portugal is an excellent country for government by referendum.
[Sidenote: Prominent Party Politicians.]
But for the present the Lisbon politicians continue to pipe to the
country, and the country refuses to dance to their piping. The
Provisional Government, formed immediately after the Revolution under
the presidency of Dr. Theophilo Braga,[53] comprised Dr. Antonio José
de Almeida[54] as Minister of the Interior, Dr. Bernardino Machado[55]
as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Brito Camacho[56] as Minister of
Public Works, and Dr. Affonso Costa[57] as Minister of Justice. So far
only one party existed, called the _Partido Republicano_, but after
the Provisional Government had come to an end Dr. Almeida dissociated
himself from it to form what he called the Evolutionist Republican party,
while a third party, the Unionist (_União Nacional Republicano_), was
constituted under the leadership of Dr. Brito Camacho. Both these parties
were slightly more Conservative in character, and in the Evolutionists
especially this tendency was subsequently accentuated. Yet the _Partido
Republicano_, under the leadership of Dr. Costa, continued to regard
itself as the only Republican party. In a sense this was true, since
the Republicans, in the words of Senhor Guerra Junqueiro, at the end of
last century, are a party of “demolition rather than reconstruction.”
Dr. Costa and his party have been excellent demolishers. Senhor Machado
Santos,[58] who had led the Republican troops in October, 1910, in
Lisbon, and is sometimes called the Founder of the Republic, constituted
himself the candid critic of Republican political tendencies, and
gathered round him a small group of Independents. But none of these
dissenting leaders have had the strength to form a Ministry of their own,
and the Conservative side of Republican politics has existed rather in
theory than in action.
[Sidenote: Dr. Affonso Costa.]
Of the Republican politicians, the most forcible, persistent, and
unscrupulous, has been Dr. Affonso Costa. Dr. Brito Camacho has beside
him the air of a retired thinker and student, while Dr. Antonio José
d’Almeida has the reputation of being more of an idealist than a
practical politician. Dr. Costa was described once in _Le Temps_ as
being likely to play “un rôle en évidence dans les manifestations de la
rue.” He is a clever lawyer, quick to see his advantage and follow it
up, but lacking far-sightedness and breadth of view. He has the strength
of his narrowness, and may be called an inverted João Franco. But he is
essentially a party politician, not a statesman. In all opposition, in
every _contretemps_, he sees the hand of clericalism and the Jesuits,
using anti-clericalism as a cement to keep his party together. His
power has been built up and based on the art of the demagogue, and by
controlling the mob and organised groups of Carbonarios he was able to
control the destinies of the Republic during times of disorder, and to
upset any government with which he disagreed. But if his hold on the mob
has made him arbiter of the Republic he has also suffered at the hands of
his supporters, and might well pray to be delivered from his friends.
[Illustration: TOWER OF CASTLE, BEJA
[_See p. 104_]
[Sidenote: The Puff Politician.]
The strange paeans of praise in _O Mundo_, poems to his _vulto imortal_,
the resolve of an admirer to order a life-like silver statue of him,
the arrest of persons for speaking ill of him, the arrest of others
accused of wishing to assassinate him, as well as his own extraordinary
speeches in Parliament and out of Parliament, showing an ignorance of
the conditions of life in Portugal almost as profound as his ignorance
of the conditions in foreign countries, might well have crushed him
beneath a load of ridicule, but have merely served to keep him in the
public eye. As to the attempts at assassinating him, these puffs of
his political admirers are now quite discredited. One of the supposed
murderers arrested at Santarem was found to be armed with nothing more
deadly than a small pocket-knife, others arrested at the _Praia das
Maçãs_, in the summer of 1913, were released as innocent after a year
and a half’s imprisonment; another, this time a schoolboy, had a pistol
put into his hand by Dr. Costa’s puffers, but fired so badly that he
did not even succeed in hitting the railway carriage in which Dr. Costa
was going to travel. His opponents must be fools indeed if they do not
realise how greatly his party would gain were a real attempt made to
assassinate him. He would be at once converted from a pleasant nonentity
to a martyr, a kind of Portuguese Ferrer. Certainly Dr. Affonso Costa
has been the politician most in evidence since the Revolution. It is
rumoured that he keeps a large number of dogs and cuts off the tail of
one of them Alcibiades-fashion as occasion offers, but this is almost
certainly a calumnious invention, cruelty to animals being quite foreign
to his nature. But it was almost pathetic to see how, at the advent of
a statesman, he withered away politically as if he had met the Snark,
and turned to conspiracy and revolution in order to overthrow him. For
General Pimenta de Castro,[59] though not a party politician, showed
truer statesmanship than all the party-leaders.
[Sidenote: The Democrats.]
A return of the Democrats to power must be disastrous for many reasons,
and the way the country would be thrown into fresh unrest and the prisons
filled may be gauged from the fact that the Democrats are wonderfully
vindictive, and are already marking out names of persons for arrest and
of buildings (of Royalist newspapers, Conservative clubs, etc.) for
attack. Vindictiveness in Portugal, especially in political questions,
is carried to extraordinary lengths, and the man marked down for
political persecution has to be continually on his guard. Perhaps years
are allowed to pass, and the victim is given no inkling of hostility;
perhaps he had left the country and returns to live peacefully and
obscurely; then when he least expects it he will find himself in gaol
or stabbed or shot. A foreigner will give far less offence if he adopts
a detached, amused, supercilious attitude than if he studies Portuguese
politics sincerely from a Portuguese point of view, and considers what is
the best remedy for the country. But all who prefer to breathe the sweet
air of Heaven rather than that of the prisons of Portugal, would do well
to club together, and keep the “Democrats” out of office until they have
moderated their inquisitorial ardour.
[Sidenote: The Carbonaria.]
As to the Carbonarios, it is hoped that if the Royalists refrain from
any violent demonstrations these devoted defenders of the Republic in
and out of season will gradually disappear. The society was founded as
early as 1823 in imitation, or rather in desecration, of the Italians
who conspired against the yoke of Austria, and was reorganised in
1848. It was, however, chiefly after the abortive Republican rising of
the 31st of January, 1891, that the _Carbonarios_ gained in strength
and, organised in small separate groups, in _choças_, _barracas_, and
_vendas_, became the most powerful political force in the country. Their
numbers in October, 1910, have been variously estimated at 40,000,
32,000, or a much lower figure. It is impossible to say, but it is
certain that since the Revolution, while the old Carbonarios were not
disbanded, new sets sprang up, organised by the Republican parties “for
the defence of the Republic.” The Democrats especially advanced hand in
hand with the Carbonarios, forming an army of Carbonario spies in their
service, till in 1913 they came into office together. These new bodies
of “insolent neo-Carbonarios,” as a Republican newspaper described them,
spread distrust and unrest through the country, spying, insulting,
arresting. “They allow us not a moment of tranquillity” (_A Republica_,
12th December, 1912). “There is no corner of the country now without
a nest of Carbonarios,” wrote Senhor Machado Santos a year after the
Revolution in _O Intransigente_, 3rd November, 1911. And these nests were
not composed, principally, of the old Carbonarios. Thus, it was possible
for Dr. Affonso Costa, when Premier, to say in the Chamber of Deputies
that he considered the _Carbonarios_ should have been disbanded after the
Revolution, referring to the old _Carbonarios_.
[Sidenote: White Antics.]
The words naturally did not apply to the post-revolution brands, such as
that of the “White Ants,” which at the very time that Dr. Costa spoke
thus were being actively organised by his Government. According to the
statements made in Parliament by Senhor Alberto Silveira, who during
three years after the Revolution of 1910 was head of the Lisbon police,
these White Ants (often suitably dressed in antique black, with flowing
black ties), organised during Dr. Costa’s Premiership, included “some
who gave their services with a view to future employment, others who
contented themselves with payment in money.” Some “belonged to Carbonario
associations created since the Revolution by individuals of low social
and moral status.” “Others came from revolutionary clubs, such as the
‘Radical Club’; some were anarchists openly hostile to the existing
_régime_.” Some used cards with _G. Civil_ printed on them, standing
for _Grupo Civil_, but intended to convey to their victims the official
authority of the _Governo Civil_. Groups (_nucleos de vigilancia_) had
been formed for the defence of the Republic, said Dr. Costa on another
occasion, at the meeting of the Republican (Democrat) Party at Aveiro in
April, 1913, and had been such a success that they would be continued.
But officially, of course, the _Carbonaria_ does not exist, the
Government knows nothing about it, and if you ask a _Carbonario_ he will
answer that there is no such thing in Portugal.
[Sidenote: Delenda est Carbonaria.]
There should be no such society in Portugal. It is not needed and only
serves to spread a feeling of distrust and discomfort in daily life,
which can only be paralleled by the state of suspicion and disquiet under
some of the Roman Emperors or in the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition.
Or if it is needed to prop up the Republic, the Republic by that very
fact stands condemned. But the Carbonarios should understand that their
services are no longer required, and take a well-earned rest. If they
do not and, encouraged by a certain section of the Republican Press,
commit fresh outrages, they will signally help the Royalist cause and
hasten the Restoration. Almost the worst feature of the last few years
has been the encouragement given by the Democrat Press to attack the
life and property of priests, Roman Catholics, and Royalists. Such a
journalist as the editor of _O Mundo_ was indirectly responsible for
the death of Lieutenant Soares and other murders and should have been
punished accordingly. The liberty of the Press cannot be held to include
toleration of direct incitements to kill political opponents. The _Mundo_
is all the more dangerous in that it is not read by the educated, but by
ignorant persons, who have no means of knowing how false and insidious
are many of its contents.
[Illustration: RUINED CASTLE, LEIRIA
[_See p. 85_]