[Footnote 35: _Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal_. By J. SMITH, Esq.,
Private Secretary to the Marquis of Saldanha. Two vols.]
The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so long
a period, and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen so
constantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxed
alliance with England that a knowledge of her interests, her habits,
and her history, becomes an especial accomplishment of the English
statesman. The two countries have an additional tie, in the
similitude of their early pursuits, their original character for
enterprise, and their mutual services. Portugal, like England, with a
narrow territory, but that territory largely open to the sea, was
maritime from her beginning; like England, her early power was
derived from the discovery of remote countries; like England, she
threw her force into colonization, at an era when all other nations
of Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; like
England, without desiring to enlarge her territory, she has preserved
her independence; and, so sustain the similitude to its full extent,
like England, she founded an immense colony in the western world,
with which, after severing the link of government, she retains the
link of a common language, policy, literature, and religion.
The growth of the great European powers at length overshadowed the
prosperity of Portugal, and the usurpation of her government by Spain
sank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of the
nation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced for
her restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain in
the world. It is remarkable that, at such periods in the history of
nations, some eminent individual comes forward, as if designated for
the especial office of a national guide. Such an individual was the
Marquis of Pombal, the virtual sovereign of Portugal for twenty-seven
years--a man of talent, intrepidity, and virtue. His services were
the crush of faction and the birth of public spirit, the fall of the
Jesuits and the peace of his country. His inscription should be, "The
Restorer of his Country."
The Marquis of Pombal was born on the 13th of May 1699, at Soure, a
Portuguese village near the town of Pombal. His father, Manoel
Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate fortune, of the rank of
_fidalgo de provincia_--a distinction which gave him the privileges
attached to nobility, though not to the title of a grandee, that
honour not descending below dukes, marquises, and counts. His mother
was Theresa de Mendonca, a woman of family. He had two brothers,
Francis and Paul. His own names were Sebastian Joseph, to which was
added that of Mello, from his maternal ancestor.
Having, like the sons of Portuguese gentlemen in general, studied for
a period in the university of Coimbra, he entered the army as a
private, according to the custom of the country, and rose to the rank
of corporal, which he held until circumstances, and an introduction
to Cardinal Motta, who was subsequently prime-minister, induced him
to devote himself to the study of history, politics, and law. The
cardinal, struck with his ability, strongly advised him to persevere
in those pursuits, appointed him, in 1733, member of the Royal
Academy of History, and shortly after, the king proposed that he
should write the history of certain of the Portuguese monarchs; but
this design was laid aside, and Pombal remained unemployed for six
years, until, in 1739, he was sent by the cardinal to London, as
Portuguese minister. He retained his office until 1745; yet it is
remarkable, and an evidence of the difficulty of acquiring a new
language, that Pombal, though thus living six active years in the
country, was never able to acquire the English language. It must,
however, be recollected, that at this period French was the universal
language of diplomacy, the language of the court circles, and the
polished language of all the travelled ranks of England. The
writings, too, of the French historians, wits, and politicians, were
the study of every man who pretended to good-breeding, and the only
study of most; so that, to a stranger, the acquisition of the
vernacular tongue could be scarcely more than a matter of curiosity.
Times, however, are changed; and the diplomatist who should now come
to this country without a knowledge of the language, would be
despised for his ignorance of an essential knowledge, and had better
remain at home. Soon after his return, he was employed in a
negotiation to reconcile the courts of Rome and Vienna on an
ecclesiastical claim. His reputation had already reached Vienna; and
it is surmised that Maria Theresa, the empress, had desired his
appointment as ambassador. His embassy was successful. At Vienna,
Pombal, who was a widower, married the Countess Ernestein Daun, by
whom he had two sons and three daughters. Pombal was destined to be a
favourite at courts from his handsome exterior. He was above the
middle size, finely formed, and with a remarkably intellectual
countenance; his manners graceful, and his language animated and
elegant. His reputation at Vienna was so high, that on a vacancy in
the Foreign office at Lisbon, Pombal was recalled to take the
portfolio in 1750. Don John, the king, died shortly after, and Don
Joseph, at the age of thirty-five, ascended the throne, appointing
Pombal virtually his prime-minister--a rank which he held, unshaken
and unrivaled, for the extraordinary period of twenty-seven years.
The six years of unemployed and private life, which the great
minister had spent in the practical study of his country, were of the
most memorable service to his future administration. His six years'
residence in England added practical knowledge to theoretical; and
with the whole machinery of a free, active, and popular government in
constant operation before his eyes, he returned to take the
government of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood,
exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the
crown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, wholly
extinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into the
instrument of their own oppression--were the elements of evil with
which the minister had to deal; and he dealt with them vigorously,
sincerely, and successfully.
The most horrible tribunal of irresponsible power, combined with the
most remorseless priestcraft, was the Inquisition; for it not merely
punished men for obeying their own consciences, but tried them in
defiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a law
contradictory of every other law, but it established a tribunal
subversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. It
was a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and noble
effort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety.
By a decree of 1751, it was ordered that thenceforth no judicial
burnings should take place without the consent and approval of the
government, taking to itself the right of enquiry and examination,
and confirming or reversing the sentence according to its own
judgment. This measure decided at once the originality and the
boldness of the minister: for it was the first effort of the kind in
a Popish kingdom; and it was made against the whole power of Rome,
the restless intrigues of the Jesuits, and the inveterate
superstition of the people.
Having achieved this great work of humanity, the minister's next
attention was directed to the defences of the kingdom. He found all
the fortresses in a state of decay, he appropriated an annual revenue
of L.7000 for their reparation; he established a national manufactory
of gunpowder, it having been previously supplied by contract, and
being of course supplied of the worst quality at the highest rate. He
established regulations for the fisheries, he broke up iniquitous
contracts, he attempted to establish a sugar refinery, and directed
the attention of the people largely to the cultivation of silk. His
next reformation was that of the police. The disorders of the late
reign had covered the highways with robbers. Pombal instituted a
police so effective, and proceeded with such determined justice
against all disturbers of the peace, that the roads grew suddenly
safe, and the streets of Lisbon became proverbial for security, at a
time when every capital of Europe was infested with robbers and
assassins, and when even the state of London was so hazardous, as to
be mentioned in the king's speech in 1753 as a scandal to the
country. The next reform was in the collection of the revenue. An
immense portion of the taxes had hitherto gone into the pockets of
the collectors. Pombal appointed twenty-eight receivers for the
various provinces, abolished at a stroke a host of inferior officers,
made the promisers responsible for the receivers, and restored the
revenue to a healthy condition. Commerce next engaged his attention;
he established a company to trade to the East and China, the old
sources of Portuguese wealth. In the western dominions of Portugal,
commerce had hitherto languished. He established a great company for
the Brazil trade. But his still higher praise was his humanity.
Though acting in the midst of a nation overrun with the most violent
follies and prejudices of Popery, he laboured to correct the abuses
of the convents; and, among the rest, their habit of retaining as
nuns the daughters of the Brazilian Portuguese who had been sent over
for their education. By a wise and humane decree, issued in 1765, the
Indians, and a large portion of Brazil, were declared free.
Expedients were adopted to civilize them, and privileges were granted
to the Portuguese who should contract marriage among them. Of course
those great objects were not achieved without encountering serious
difficulties. The pride of the idle aristocracy, the sleepless
intriguing of the Jesuits, the ignorant enthusiasm of the people, and
the sluggish supremacy of the priests, were all up in arms against
him. But his principle was pure, his knowledge sound, and his
resolution decided. Above all, he had, in the person of the king, a
man of strong mind, convinced of the necessities of change, and
determined to sustain the minister. The reforms soon vindicated
themselves by the public prosperity; and Pombal exercised all the
powers of a despotic sovereign, in the benevolent spirit of a
regenerator of his country.
But a tremendous physical calamity was now about to put to the test
at once the fortitude of this great minister, and the resources of
Portugal.
On the morning of All-Saints' day, the 1st of November 1755, Lisbon
was almost torn up from the foundations by the most terrible
earthquake on European record. As it was a high Romish festival, the
population were crowding to the churches, which were lighted up in
honour of the day. About a quarter before ten the first shock was
felt, which lasted the extraordinary length of six or seven minutes;
then followed an interval of about five minutes, after which the
shock was renewed, lasting about three minutes. The concussions were
so violent in both instances that nearly all the solid buildings were
dashed to the ground, and the principal part of the city almost
wholly ruined. The terror of the population, rushing through the
falling streets, gathered in the churches, or madly attempting to
escape into the fields, may be imagined; but the whole scene of
horror, death, and ruin, exceeds all description. The ground split
into chasms, into which the people were plunged in their fright.
Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus, agitated like the land,
suddenly rose to an extraordinary height, burst upon the land, and
swept away all within its reach. It was said to have risen to the
height of five-and-twenty or thirty feet above its usual level, and
to have sunk again as much below it. And this phenomenon occurred
four times.
The despatch from the British consul stated, that the especial force
of the earthquake seemed to be directly under the city; for while
Lisbon was lifted from the ground, as if by the explosion of a
gunpowder mine, the damage either above or below was not so
considerable. One of the principal quays, to which it was said that
many people had crowded for safety, was plunged under the Tagus, and
totally disappeared. Ships were carried down by the shock on the
river, dashes to pieces against each other, or flung upon the shore.
To complete the catastrophe, fires broke out in the ruins, which
spread over the face of the city, burned for five or six days, and
reduced all the goods and property of the people to ashes. For forty
days the shocks continued with more or less violence, but they had
now nothing left to destroy. The people were thus kept in a constant
state of alarm, and forced to encamp in the open fields, though it
was now winter. The royal family were encamped in the gardens of the
palace; and, as in all the elements of society had been shaken
together, Lisbon and its vicinity became the place of gathering for
banditti from all quarters in the kingdom. A number of Spanish
deserters made their way to the city, and robberies and murders of
the most desperate kind were constantly perpetrated.
During this awful period, the whole weight of government fell upon
the shoulders of the minister; and he bore it well. He adopted the
most active measures for provisioning the city, for repressing
plunder and violence, and for enabling the population to support
themselves during this period of suffering. It was calculated that
seven millions sterling could scarcely repair the damage of the city;
and that not less than eighty thousand lives had been lost, either
crushed by the earth or swallowed up by the waters. Some conception
of the native mortality may be formed from that of the English: of
the comparatively small number of whom, resident at that time in
Lisbon, no less than twenty-eight men and fifty women were among the
sufferers.
The royal family were at the palace of Belem when this tremendous
calamity occurred. Pombal instantly hastened there. He found every
one in consternation. "What is to be done," exclaimed the king, as he
entered "to meet this infliction of divine justice?" The calm and
resolute answer of Pombal was--"Bury the dead, and feed the living."
This sentence is still recorded, with honour, in the memory of
Portugal.
The minister then threw himself into his carriage, and returned to
the ruins. For several days his only habitation was his carriage; and
from it he continued to issue regulations for the public security.
Those regulations amounted to the remarkable number of two hundred;
and embraced all the topics of police, provisions, and the burial of
the sufferers. Among those regulations was the singular, but
sagacious one, of prohibiting all persons from leaving the city
without a passport. By this, those who had robbed the people, or
plundered the church plate, were prevented from escaping to the
country and hiding their plunder, and consequently were obliged to
abandon, or to restore it. But every shape of public duty was met by
this vigorous and intelligent minister. He provided for the cure of
the wounded, the habitancy of the houseless, the provision of the
destitute. He brought troops from the provinces for the protection of
the capital, he forced the idlers to work, he collected the inmates
of the ruined religious houses, he removed the ruins of the streets,
buried the dead, and restored the services of the national religion.
Another task subsequently awaited him--the rebuilding of the city. He
began boldly; and all that Lisbon now has of beauty is due to the
taste and energy of Pombal. He built noble squares. He did more: he
built the more important fabric of public sewers in the new streets,
and he laid out a public garden for the popular recreation. But he
found, as Wren found, even in England, the infinite difficulty of
opposing private interest, even in public objects; and Lisbon lost
the opportunity of being the most picturesque and stately of European
cities. One project, which would have been at once of the highest
beauty and of the highest benefit--a terrace along the shore of the
Tagus from Santa Apollonia to Belem, a distance of nearly six miles,
which would have formed the finest promenade in the world--he was
either forced to give up or to delay, until its execution was
hopeless. It was never even begun.
The vigour of Pombal's administration raised bitter enemies to him
among those who had lived on the abuses of government, or the plunder
of the people. The Jesuits hated alike the king and his minister.
They even declared the earthquake to have been a divine judgment for
the sins of the administration. But they were rash enough, in the
intemperance of their zeal, to threaten a repetition of the
earthquake at the same time next year. When the destined day came,
Pombal planted strong guards at the city gates, to prevent the panic
of the people in rushing into the country. The earthquake did not
fulfil the promise; and the people first laughed at themselves, and
then at the Jesuits. The laugh had important results in time.
There are few things more remarkable in diplomatic history, than the
long connexion of Portugal with England. It arose naturally from the
commerce of the two nations--Portugal, already the most adventurous
of nations, and England, growing in commercial enterprise. The
advantages were mutual. In the year 1367, we have a Portuguese treaty
stipulating for protection to the Portuguese traders in England. In
1382, a royal order of Richard II. permits the Portuguese ambassador
to bring his baggage into England free of duty--perhaps one of the
earliest instances of a custom which marked the progress of
civilization, and which has since been generally adopted throughout
all civilized nations. A decree of Henry IV., in 1405, exonerates the
Portuguese resident in England, and their ships, from being made
responsible for the debts contracted by their ambassadors. In 1656,
the important privilege was conceded to the English in Portugal, of
being exempted from the native jurisdiction, and being tried by a
judge appointed by England. This, in our days, might be an
inadmissible privilege; but two centuries ago, in the disturbed
condition of the Portuguese laws and general society, it might have
been necessary for the simple protection of the strangers.
The theories of domestic manufactures and free trade have lately
occupied so large a portion of public interest, that it is curious to
see in what light they were regarded by a statesman so far in advance
of his age as Pombal. The minister's theory is in striking
contradiction to his practice. He evidently approved of monopoly and
prohibitions, but he exercised neither the one nor the other--nature
and necessity were too strong against him. We are, however, to
recollect, that the language of complaint was popular in Portugal, as
it always will be in a poor country, and that the minister who would
be popular must adopt the language of complaint. In an eloquent and
almost impassioned memoir by Pombal, he mourns over the poverty of
his country, and hastily imputes it to the predominance of English
commerce. He tells us that, in the middle of the eighteenth century,
Portugal scarcely produced any thing towards her own support. Two
thirds of her physical necessities were supplied from England. He
complains that England had become mistress of the entire commerce of
Portugal, and in fact that the Portuguese trade was only an English
trade; that the English were the furnishers and retailers of all the
necessaries of life throughout the country, and that the Portuguese
had nothing to do but look on; that Cromwell, by the treaty which
allowed the supply of Portugal with English cloths to the amount of
two million sterling, had utterly impoverished the country; and in
short, that the weakness and incapacity of Portugal, as an European
state, were wholly owing, to her being destitute of trade, and that
the destitution was wholly owing to her being overwhelmed by English
commodities.
We are not about to enter into detail upon this subject, but it is to
be remembered, that Portugal obtained the cloth, even if she paid for
it, cheaper from England than she could have done from any other
country in Europe; that she had no means of making the cloth for
herself, and that, after all, man must be clothed. Portugal, without
flocks or fire, without coals or capital, could never have
manufactured cloth enough to cover the tenth part of her population,
at ten times the expense. This has occurred in later days, and in
more opulent countries. We remember, in the reign of the Emperor
Paul, when he was frantic enough to declare war against England, a
pair of broadcloth pantaloons costing seven guineas in St Peterburg.
This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguese
peasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufactures
being this, that no folly can be more foolish than to attempt to form
them where the means and the country do not give them a natural
superiority. For example, coals and iron are essential to the product
of all works in metal. France has neither. How can she, therefore,
contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply by
doing without it, and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlery
that the world has ever seen. If, where manufactures are already
established, however ineffectual, it may become a question with the
government whether some privations must not be submitted to by the
people in general, rather than precipitate those unlucky manufactures
into ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject where
manufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go to
the best market, let no attempt be made to force nature, and let no
money be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. One
thing, however, is quite clear with respect to Portugal, that, by the
English alliance, she has gained what is worth all the manufactures
of Europe--independence. When, in 1640, she threw off the Spanish
usurpation, and placed the Braganza family on the national throne,
she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protection
never has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion of
Portugal in 1762, England sent her ten thousand men, and the first
officer of his day, Count La Lippe, who, notwithstanding his German
name, was an Englishman born, and had commenced his service in the
Guards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions, and Portugal was
included in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance of
Portugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten, and too
memorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand the
full value of this assistance, we are to recollect, that Portugal is
one of the smallest kingdoms of Europe, and at the same time the most
exposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain, and its whole
sea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine and
oranges, and that England is incomparably its best customer for both.
Pombal, in his memoir, imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugal
to her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of the
paradoxes of the last century; but nations are only aggregates of
men, and what makes an individual rich, cannot make a nation poor.
The true secret is this--that while the possession of the gold mines
induced an indolent government to rely upon them for the expenses of
the state, that reliance led them to abandon sources of profit in the
agriculture and commerce of the country, which were of ten times the
value. This was equally the case in Spain. The first influx from the
mines of Peru, enabled the government to disregard the revenues
arising from the industry of the people. In consequence of the want
of encouragement from the government, the agriculture and commerce of
Spain sank rapidly into the lowest condition, whilst the government
indolently lived on the produce of the mines. But the more gold and
silver exist in circulation, the less becomes their value. Within
half a century, the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines,
had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and those
imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of
government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the
mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general
value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both
Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had no
means to pay--in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the true
solution of the problem--why have the gold and silver mines of the
Peninsula left them the poorest nations of Europe? Yet this was
contrary to the operation of new wealth. The discovery of the mines
of the New World appears to have been a part of that providential
plan, by which a general impulse was communicated to Europe in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was preparing for a new
vigour of religion, politics, commerce, and civilization. Nothing
stimulates national effort of every kind with so much power and
rapidity, as a new general accession of wealth, or, as the political
economist would pronounce it, a rise of wages, whether industrial or
intellectual; and this rise was effected by the new influx of the
mines. If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England, she would have
converted their treasures into new canals and high-roads, new
harbours, new encouragements to agriculture, new excitements to
public education, new enterprises of commerce, or the colonization of
new countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus she
would at once have increased her natural opulence, and saved herself
from suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals, or more
partially, by her active employment of them, have almost wholly
prevented that depreciation. But the Peninsula, relying wholly on its
imported wealth, and neglecting its infinitely more important
national riches, was exactly in the condition of an individual, who
spends the principal of his property, which is continually sinking
until it is extinguished altogether.
Another source of Peninsular poverty existed in its religion. The
perpetual holidays of Popery made even the working portion of the
people habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly a
fourth of the year by the intervention of holidays, and thus idleness
is turned into a sacred merit, the nation must prepare for beggary.
But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communities
of sanctified idlers, monks and nuns by the ten thousand, in every
province and almost in every town, gave a sacred sanction to
idleness--gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred the
lounging and useless life of the convent to regular labour, and even
provided the means of living to multitudes of vagabonds, who were
content to eat their bread, and drink their soup, daily at the
convent gates, rather than to make any honest decent effort to
maintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a large
portion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. The
soldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics,
dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarily
unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It
makes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but the
singular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal,
and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of the
comforts essential in a severer temperature, could have saved them
both from being the most pauperized of all nations, or even from
perishing altogether, and leaving the land a desert behind them. It
strangely illustrates these positions, that, in 1754, the Portuguese
treasury was so utterly emptied, that the monarch was compelled to
borrow 400,000 crusadoes (L.40,000) from a private company, for the
common expenses of his court.
Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronounce
Portugal a dependent on England, it is impossible to turn a page of
her history without seeing the measureless importance of her English
connexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has either
originated with, or been sustained by, her great ally. Among the
first of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756--the year
following that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon into
ruins--the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira, Minho, and
Tras-os-Montes, represented that they were on the verge of ruin. The
adulteration of the Portuguese wines by the low traders had destroyed
their character in Europe, and the object of the representation was
to reinstate that character. Pombal immediately took up their cause;
and, in the course of the same year, was formed the celebrated Oporto
Wine Company, with a capital of £120,000. The declared principles of
the establishment were, to preserve the quality of the wines, to
secure the growers by fixing a regular price, and to protect them
from the combinations of dealers. The company had the privilege of
purchasing all the wines grown within a particular district at a
fixed price, for a certain period after the vintage. When that period
had expired, the growers were at liberty to sell the wines which
remained unpurchased in whatever market they pleased. Monopolies, in
the advanced and prosperous career of commercial countries, generally
sink into abuse; but they are, in most instances, absolutely
necessary to the infant growth of national traffic. All the commerce
of Europe has commenced by companies. In the early state of European
trade, individuals were too poor for those large enterprises which
require a large outlay, and whose prospects, however promising, are
distant. What one cannot do, must be done by a combination of many,
if it is to be done at all. Though when individual capital, by the
very action of that monopoly, becomes powerful enough for those
enterprises, then the time is at hand when the combination may be
dissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner come
into existence, than its benefits were felt in every branch of
Portuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of the
vine, which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in the
revolutionary changes of late years. But the question, whether the
country is yet fit to bear the abolition, is settled by the fact,
that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin, and that the necessity
of the case is now urging the formation of the company once more.
The decision of Pombal's character was never more strongly shown than
on this occasion. The traders into whose hands the Portuguese wines
had fallen, and who had enjoyed an illegal monopoly for so many
years, raised tumults, and serious insurrection was threatened. At
Oporto, the mob plundered the director's house, and seized on the
chief magistrate. The military were attacked, and the government was
endangered. The minister instantly ordered fresh troops to Oporto;
arrests took place; seventeen persons were executed; five-and-twenty
sent to the galleys; eighty-six banished, and others subjected to
various periods of imprisonment. The riots were extinguished. In a
striking memoir, written by Pombal after his retirement from office,
he gives a brief statement of the origin of this company--a topic at
all times interesting to the English public, and which is about to
derive a new interest from its practical revival in Portugal. We
quote a fragment.
"The unceasing and urgent works which the calamitous earthquake of
November 1st, 1755, had rendered indispensable, were still vigorously
pursued, when, in the following year, one Mestre Frei Joao de
Mansilla presented himself at the Giunta at Belem, on the part of the
principal husbandmen of Upper Douro, and of the respectable
inhabitants of Oporto, in a state of utter consternation.
"In the popular outcry of the time, the English were represented as
making themselves the sole managers of every thing. The fact being,
that, as they were the only men who had any money, they were almost
the sole purchasers in the Portuguese markets. But the English here
complained of were the low traffickers, who, in conjunction with the
Lisbon and Oporto vintners, bought and managed the wines at their
discretion. It was represented to the king, that, by those means, the
price of wine had been reduced to 7200 rios a pipe, or less, until
the expense of cultivation was more than the value of the produce;
that those purchasers required one or two years' credit; that the
price did not pay for the hoeing of the land, which was consequently
deserted; that all the principal families of one district had been
reduced to poverty, so much so as to be obliged to sell their knives
and forks; that the poor people had not a drop of oil for their
salad, so that they were obliged, even in Lent, to season their
vegetables with the fat of hogs." The memoir mentions even gross vice
as a consequence of their extreme poverty.
We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may be
reduced by individual mismanagement, and what important changes may
be produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. The
king's letters-patent of 1756, establishing the company, provided at
once for the purity of the wine, its extended sale in England, and
the solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousand
instances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regular
government, to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against this
most salutary and successful act of the king. At confession, they
prompted the people to believe "that the wines of the company were
not fit for the celebration of mass." (For the priests drink wine in
the communion, though the people receive only the bread.) To give
practical example to their precept, they dispersed narratives of a
great popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and both
incentives resulted in the riots in Oporto, which it required all the
vigour of Pombal to put down.
But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of the
great minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuits
was the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of this
event is among the most memorable features of a century finishing
with the fall of the French monarchy.
The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous, and
always unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes in
the projects of usurpation, it has scarcely ever advanced beyond the
original bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue,
transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits, was employed for
the similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe was
already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed
by jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, and
powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room
for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the most
daring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers
of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might
grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited
multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the
endless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in the
rocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. The
enterprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indians
of Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independent
republic, numbering thirty-one towns, with a population of a hundred
thousand souls. To render their power complete, they prohibited all
communication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese,
forbidding them to learn the language of either country, and
implanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of both
Spain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed, and orders
were sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in the
mean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchange
of territory, and troops were ordered to effect the exchange.
Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They had
reckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils;
but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without a
struggle. They accordingly armed the natives, and prepared for a
civil war.
The Indians, unwarlike as they have always been, now headed by their
Jesuit captains, outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed;
and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. The
expedition was renewed in the next year, 1755, and again baffled. The
Portuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts, and in
1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as ever
from final success, and the war, fruitless as it was, had begun to
drain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already cost
the treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. But
the minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of a
different character from the race who had, for the last hundred
years, wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. His
clear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay, and defied
the difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined to
extinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of this
determination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. In
the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits were the
ecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of the
chief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminaries
for national education; the principal professors in all the
universities;--and this influence, vast as it was by its extent and
variety, was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline, the
unhesitating obedience, and the systematic activity of their order.
All the Jesuits existing acknowledged one head, the general of their
order, whose constant residence was at Rome. But their influence,
powerful as it was by their open operation on society, derived
perhaps a superior power from its secret exertions. Its name was
legion--its numbers amounted to thousands--it took every shape of
society, from the highest to the lowest. It was the noble and the
peasant--the man of learning and the man of trade--the lawyer and the
monk--the soldier and the sailor--nay, it was said, that such was the
extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit was
suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a
Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The
good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the
power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of
artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human
opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the
triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent
sanctity were prepared to live and die.
The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor, the
Jesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royal
family was in the hands of Jesuits. Pombal procured a royal order
that no Jesuit should approach the court, without obtaining the
express permission of the king. He lost no time in repeating the
assault. Within a month, on the 8th of October 1767, he sent
instructions to the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, to demand a
private audience, and lay before the pope the misdemeanours of the
order.
Those instructions charged the Jesuits with the most atrocious
personal profligacy, with a design to master all public power, to
gather opulence dangerous to the state, and actually to plot against
the authority of the crowns of Europe. He announced, that the king of
Portugal had commanded all the Jesuit confessors of the prince and
princesses to withdraw to their own convents; and this important
manifesto closed by soliciting the interposition of the papal see to
prevent the ruin, by purifying an order which had given scandal to
Christianity, by offences against the public and private peace of
society, equally unexampled, habitual, and abominable. In 1758, the
representation to the pope was renewed, with additional proofs that
the order had determined to usurp every function, and thwart every
act of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family,
though dismissed, continued to conspire; that they resisted the
formation of royal institutions for the renewal of the national
commerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults, in
defiance of the royal authority.
Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was to
be obtained, or money was to be made. The "Great Wine Company," on
which the chief commerce of Portugal, and almost the existence of its
northern provinces depended, was a peculiar object of their
hostility, for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend, except they
were general jealousy of all lay power, and hostility to all the
works of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one of
their popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiously
exclaiming, "that whoever joined that company, would have no part in
the company of Jesus Christ."
The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long before
been represented to the popes, and had drawn down upon them those
remonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once saves
appearances, and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. The
Jesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were too
palpable to be passed over. In consequence, the complaints of the
monarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued from
time to time, equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from these
documents may be ascertained the singularly gross, worldly, and
illegitimate pursuits of an order, professing itself to be supremely
religious, and the prime sustainer of the "faith of the gospel." The
bull of Benedict the XIV., issued in 1741, prohibited from "trade and
commerce, all worldly dominion, and the _purchase_ and _sale_ of
converted Indians." The bull extended the prohibition generally to
the monkish orders, to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But a
bull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of the
year, expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east and
west. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of the
most atrocious offences against society, humanity, and morals. By
this bull, "all men, and especially _Jesuits_," are prohibited, under
penalty of excommunication, from "making slaves of the Indians; from
selling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives and
children; from robbing them of their property; from transporting them
from their native soil," &c.
Nothing but the strongest necessity, and the most ample evidence,
would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome, whether sincere or
insincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from day
to day. In 1758, the condemnation was followed by the practical
measure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of the
Jesuits in Portugal, and the Portuguese settlements in the east and
west.
Within two months of this appointment the following decree was
issued:--"For just reasons known to us, and which concern especially
the service of God and the public welfare, we suspend from the power
of confessing and preaching, in the whole extent of our patriarchate,
the fathers of the Society of Jesus, from this moment, and until
further notice." Saldanha had been just raised to the patriarchate.
We have given some observations on this subject, from its peculiar
importance to the British empire at this moment. The order of the
Jesuits, extinguished in the middle of the last century by the
unanimous demand of Europe, charged with every crime which could make
a great association obnoxious to mankind, and exhibiting the most
atrocious violations of the common rules of human morality, has,
within this last quarter of a century, been revived by the papacy,
with the express declaration, that its revival is for the exclusive
purpose of giving new effect to the doctrines, the discipline, and
the power of Rome. The law which forbids the admission of Jesuits
into England, has shared the fate of all laws feebly administered;
and Jesuits are active by hundreds or by thousands in every portion
of the empire. They have restored the whole original system,
sustained by all their habitual passion for power, and urging their
way, with all their ancient subtlety, through all ranks of
Protestantism.
The courage and intelligence of Pombal placed him in the foremost
rank of Europe, when the demand was the boldest and most essential
service which a great minister could offer to his country; he broke
the power of Jesuitism. But an order so numerous--for even within the
life of its half-frenzied founder it amounted to 19,000--so
vindictive, and flung from so lofty a rank of influence, could not
perish without some desperate attempts to revenge its ruin. The life
of Pombal was so constantly in danger, that the king actually
assigned him a body guard. But the king himself was exposed to one of
the most remarkable plots of regicide on record--the memorable Aveiro
and Tavora conspiracy.
On the night of the 3d of September 1758, as the king was returning
to the palace at night in a cabriolet, attended only by his valet,
two men on horseback, and armed with blunderbusses, rode up to the
carriage, and leveled their weapons at the monarch. One of them
missed fire, the other failed of its effect. The royal postilion, in
alarm, rushed forward, when two men, similarly waiting in the road,
galloped after the carriage, and both fired their blunderbusses into
it behind. The cabriolet was riddled with slugs, and the king was
wounded in several places. By an extraordinary presence of mind, Don
Joseph, instead of ordering the postilion to gallop onward, directed
him instantly to turn back, and, to avoid alarming the palace, carry
him direct to the house of the court surgeon. By this fortunate
order, he escaped the other groups of the conspirators, who were
stationed further on the road, and under whose repeated discharges he
would probably have fallen.
The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperate
atrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in the
kingdom who preserved his composure, and that one was Pombal.
Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event which
had threatened almost a national convulsion, he suffered the whole to
become a matter of doubt, and allowed the king's retirement from the
public eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. The
public despatch of Mr Hay, the British envoy at Lisbon, alludes to
it, chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a court
mourning--the order for this etiquette, on the death of the Spanish
queen, not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that it
had been impeded by the king's illness,--"it being the custom of the
court to put on _gala_ when any of the royal family are blooded. When
I went to court to enquire after his majesty's health, I was there
informed that the king, on Sunday night the 3d instant, passing
through a gallery to go to the queen's apartment, had the misfortune
to fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight different
times; and, as his majesty is a fat bulky man, to prevent any humours
fixing there, his physicians have advised that he should not use his
arm, but abstain from business for some time. In consequence, the
queen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness."
This was the public version of the event. But appended to the
despatch was a postscript, in _cipher_, stating the reality of the
transaction. Pombal's sagacity, and his self control, perhaps a still
rarer quality among the possessors of power, were exhibited in the
strongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single step
appeared to be taken to punish, or even to detect the assassins. The
subject was allowed to die away; when, on the 9th of December, all
Portugal was startled by a royal decree, declaring the crime, and
offering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some days
afterwards Lisbon heard, with astonishment, an order for the arrest
of the Duke of Aveira, one of the first nobles, and master of the
royal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis of
Tavora, himself, his two sons, his four brothers, and his two
sons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits were
forbidden to be seen out of their houses.
The three months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantly
employed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidently
necessary, where the criminals were among the highest officials and
nobles, seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of the
Jesuits. When his proofs were complete, he crushed the conspirators
at a single grasp. His singular inactivity had disarmed them; and
nothing but the most consummate composure could have prevented their
flying from justice. On the 12th of January 1759, they were found
guilty; and on the 13th they were put to death, to the number of
nine, with the Marchioness of Tavora, in the square of Belem. The
scaffold and the bodies were burned, and the ashes thrown into the
sea.
Those were melancholy acts; the works of melancholy times. But as no
human crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide,
no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister, compelled
to exercise justice in its severity, for the protection of all orders
of the kingdom. In our more enlightened period, we must rejoice that
those dreadful displays of judicial power have passed away; and that
laws are capable of being administered without the tortures, or the
waste of life, which agonize the feelings of society. Yet, while
blood for blood continued to be the code; while the sole prevention
of crime was sought for in the security of judgment; and while even
the zeal of justice against guilt was measured by the terrible
intensity of the punishment--we must charge the horror of such
sweeping executions to the ignorance of the age, much more than to
the vengeance of power.
This tragedy was long the subject of European memory; and all the
extravagance of popular credulity was let loose ill discovering the
causes of the conspiracy. It was said, in the despatches of the
English minister, that the Marquis of Tavora, who had been Portuguese
minister in the East, was irritated by the royal attentions to his
son's wife. Ambition was the supposed ground of the Duke of Aveira's
perfidy. The old Marchioness of Tavora, who had been once the
handsomest woman at court, and was singularly vein and haughty, was
presumed to have received some personal offence, by the rejection of
the family claim to a dukedom. All is wrapped in the obscurity
natural to transactions in which individuals of rank are involved in
the highest order of crime. It was the natural policy of the minister
to avoid extending the charges by explaining the origin of the crime.
The connexions of the traitors were still many and powerful; and
further disclosures might have produced only further attempts at the
assassination of the minister or the king.
It was now determined to act with vigour against the Jesuits, who
were distinctly charged with assisting, if not originating, the
treason. A succession of decrees were issued, depriving them of their
privileges and possessions; and finally, on the 5th of October 1759,
the cardinal patriarch Saldanha issued the famous mandate, by which
the whole society was expelled from the Portuguese dominions. Those
in the country were transported to Civita Vecchia; those in the
colonies were also conveyed to the Papal territory; and thus, by the
intrepidity, wisdom, and civil courage of one man, the realm was
relieved from the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous
body which had ever disturbed the peace of society.
Portugal having thus the honour of taking the lead, Rome herself at
length followed; and, on the accession of the celebrated Ganganelli,
Clement XIV., a resolution was adopted to suppress the Jesuits in
every part of the world. On the 21st of July 1773, the memorable bull
"Dominus ac Redemptor," was published, and the order was at an end.
The announcement was received in Lisbon with natural rejoicing. _Te
Deum_ was sung, and the popular triumph was unbounded and universal.
We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career.
His frame, though naturally vigorous, began to feel the effects of
his incessant labour, and an apoplectic tendency threatened to
shorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for that
whole life was one of _temperate_ and _progressive_ reform. His first
application was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer on
the verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in the
collection. In 1761, his new system was adopted, by which the
finances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the whole
national expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform was
the royal household, where all unnecessary expenses--and they were
numerous--were abolished. Another curious reform will be longer
remembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used _only_ the
_knife_ at dinner! Pombal introduced the _fork_. He brought this
novel addition to the table with him from England in 1745!
The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the "College of
Nobles" for their express education. There they were taught every
thing suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being, "that they
should _not converse in Latin_," the old pedantic custom of the
monks. The nobles were directed to converse in English, French,
Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom of
speaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize."
Another custom, though of a more private order, attracted the notice
of this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adopted
as a habit by the widows of the nobility, to spend the first years of
their widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up their
windows, retired to some gloomy chamber, slept on the floor, and,
suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications, forbade
the approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger to
health, and often with death, besides its general melancholy
influence on society, the minister publicly "enacted," that every
part of it should be abolished; and, moreover, that the widows should
always remove to another house; or, where this was not practicable,
that they "should _not_ close the shutters, nor '_mourn_' for more
than a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor sleep on
the ground." Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank him
still, for this war against a popular, but most vexatious, absurdity.
His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763, he fixed it at
30,000 men, whom he equipped effectually, and brought into practical
discipline.
A succession of laws, made for the promotion of European and colonial
trade, next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknown
before. Pombal next abolished the "Index Expurgitorius"--an
extraordinary achievement, not merely beyond his age, but against the
whole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content with
abolishing the restraint; he attempted to _restore_ the PRESS in
Portugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed in
foreign counties. He established a "Royal Press," and gave its
superintendence to Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had been
expatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such, in value
and extent, were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigable
and powerful mind, that when, in 1766, he suffered a paralytic
stroke, the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation.
At length Don Joseph, the king, and faithful friend of Pombal, died,
after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombal
requested to resign, and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation,
and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to his
country-seat, where Wraxall saw him in 1772, and thus describes his
appearance. "At this time he had attained his seventy-third year, but
age seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activity
of his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender, his
face long, pale, and meagre, but full of intelligence."
But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and the
loss of his power as minister produced a succession of intrigues
against him, by the relatives of the Tavora family, and doubtless
also by the ecclesiastical influence, which has always been at once
so powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by a
trial, at which, however, the only sentence inflicted was an order to
retire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was, at that time,
probably suffering under the first access of that derangement, which,
in a few years after, utterly incapacitated her, and condemned the
remainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the last
praise is not given to the great minister, while his personal
disinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life was
to present to the throne a statement of his public income, when it
appeared that, during the twenty-seven years of his administration,
he had received no public emolument but his salary as secretary of
state, and about L.100 a-year for another office. But he was rich;
for, as his two brothers remained unmarried, their incomes were
joined with his own. He lived, held in high respect and estimation by
the European courts, to the great age of eighty-three, dying on the
5th of May without pain. A long inscription, yet in which the
panegyric did not exceed the justice, was placed on his tomb. Yet a
single sentence might have established his claim to the perpetual
gratitude of his country and mankind--
"Here lies the man who banished the
Jesuits from Portugal."
Mr Smith's volume is intelligently written, and does much credit to
his research and skill.