TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE QUARREL WITH PORTUGAL.
WE are inclined to believe, on all the evidence before us, that there is a history behind the recent conduct of Portugal which, if it were known, would diminish English bitterness, and produce in many quarters a fresh reluctance to act hastily. Most of our readers will probably have noticed the extraordinary tone of certainty with which the Times' correspondent in Paris predicted on Tuesday the almost immediate fall of the Portuguese Monarchy. Such an utterance is exceedingly unusual, especially from a correspondent who, though open to ridicule for some intellectual peculiarities, is an unusually experienced man, not hostile to monarchies, and especially disinclined to predict evil to members of the Orleans family, now so closely interwoven with those of both Portugal and Brazil. In this instance there is, we believe, much reason to think M. de Blowitz well informed. Certainly some of the most acute of Portuguese politicians have a strong impression of coming danger. A variety of causes, one of which is the intimate connection with Brazil, have tended to diffuse Republican feeling in Portugal, especially among the classes which furnish officers and sub-officers to the Army, and Lisbon, in particular, is said to have been deeply affected by the Republican propaganda. But little personal loyalty is felt towards the new King, a young man not distinguished in any way, and an impatience has been growing up of what is considered the back- ward condition of Portugal and her unfairly low posi- tion among the nations of the world. The influence of France, too, is great among all the Latinised races, and the whole of that influence—political, literary, and anti-religious—is thrown upon the Republican side. Lastly, Brazil, a colony so much greater than the mother- country, occupies towards Portugal something of the position which the American Union occupies towards England,—that of a child often accused of vagaries, but suspected by large classes to be somewhat in advance of the parent stock. The revolution in Rio appalled the Palace in Lisbon, and created among the people an intel- lectual commotion which found expression in the new audacity of the Republican Press; and this, again, re-excited vehemently Republican feeling. Under these circumstances, the statesmen of the Monarchy are exceedingly anxious to awaken national pride, to wave the flag in fact, and so to interest those active and impulsive minds which might otherwise be studying the delinquencies of those who govern, and the rather worm-eaten structure on which the present constitution turns as on a pivot. They know the peculiar interest which the Portuguese, who once scoured the world in search of new Empires, take in all projects for tropical colonies, and they have hailed the idea of estab- lishing a vast dependency stretching across Africa as some- thing to distract the national imagination. They know quite well that such a dependency is beyond the resources of Portugal, which even now is sometimes compelled in Africa to use convicts as soldiers—as, indeed, we also did in India in Clive's time—and they no more dream of fighting England than of conquering her ; but they must show the Monarchy in the attitude of a strong, militant, and enter- prising force, only prevented by malignant outside Powers from recommencing a glorious career in tropical countries, where, as once in Brazil, one can employ masses of labour, and so make a fortune out of a plantation crop. The English never think of the Portuguese as money-makers at all ; but they have a commercial instinct in them still, and there are few towns in Brazil, and few ports on the coasts of Africa, where a Portuguese is not the most energetic and successful trader or employer of labour, not always collected under the most humane conditions. This position of affairs in Portugal renders the task of the British Foreign Office one of extreme delicacy, and, indeed, of some embarrassment. A good, sharp, ringing rap, such as most Englishmen interested in Africa would like to see administered to a Power which, besides its other delinquencies, screens and favours slavery in Africa as, in its own words, "a natural product of the cir- cumstances," might crumble the Monarchy in the dust, which is not exactly a Conservative object, or, indeed, Mu object of any large body of Englishmen, the mass -tow in their hearts think Republican institu- tions thing% fox Teutons of both branches and _ for Swiss, but exceedingly inexpedient instruments for nations of any other breeds. At the same time, it ia quite impossible for England to allow the Monarchists of Portugal to make political capital at her expense, to let loose their rather unscrupulous agents on our dependent allies, or to frustrate a well-considered and large policy, adopted in the direct interest of Africa as well as of her own subjects. The immediate incident which has driven_ the Portuguese Press so wild may, of course, have been exaggerated, or even—though that is to the last degree im- probable—intentionally misrepresented. Englishmen in Africa acquire a sort of horror of Portuguese influence, owing to its baneful effect upon the slave-stealing trade, which sometimes makes them unjust, and apt to forget that, in international law, the distinction between bad and good Powers is not yet fully recognised. It will, we believe, be found, when the evidence has all come home, that Major Pinto did, as alleged, kill a great number of the Makololo ; but it is not certain that he did not act in self-defence, or in pursuance of objects with which the English and Portu- guese rivalry in Africa has nothing whatever to do. His action may be explained or disavowed ; but when it is,. there will remain the much larger question of the Portu- guese right to stretch their nominal sovereignty right across Africa, and so bar out Great Britain from connecting together her Eastern and Southern possessions on the Continent. That right, which is the right put forward in all the recent Portuguese decrees and despatches, with their minute geographical details, as Lord Salisbury has already intimated, cannot be allowed ; and if the Portu- guese employ violence to enforce it, they must be- forcibly resisted, even if we have to occupy Madeira,. sequestrate Goa, and blockade the mouths of the Zam- besi. It is quite certain, and, indeed, on the face of things, that Portugal can neither colonise nor civilise- such an expanse of territory, and that is the first claim recognised by the European Conference which distributed the territories on the Niger and Congo, much as the Pope used to distribute territories in the pagan em- pires of the two Americas. The second ground of claim, ancient occupation, is better, for it is useless to deny that Portuguese did once wander through and build forts in nearly the whole region • under dispute ; but then, it proves a great deal too much. If occupation of that sort in- volves sovereignty, then Portugal is de jure sovereign at this moment over Lower Bengal, Arracan, British Burmalt, and, we think, every port in India except Bombay, which she gave by Treaty to Charles II. as part of his wife's dower ! The plain truth of the matter is, that the Portu- guese were once the most daring and the keenest-sighted of all the European maritime adventurers ; that they stumbled about, as we do now, everywhere ; and that if they had possessed a little more force and one more virtue —common humanity—they would nearly two centuries before us have occupied in both Asia and Africa our position. As it was, they were compelled to recede ; and to allow them now to plead the rights they abandoned generations ago would be to upset the distribution of power over half the world. They must be made to give way somehow, in the general interest of black mankind,. and of our own duty in the world, which is to act in Asia and Africa as ploughshare, breaking the crust and allowing seed to be sown, and it is Lord Salisbury's task to secure this end with as little disturbance as may be to European peace. He can best be assisted by silence, or by the calmest- discussion, either of which will leave him free to deal with- Portugal without weakness, and without too much affront to the amour-propre of a nation which cannot forget that it was once foremost in adventure in every quarter of the world.
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