Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

The Republicans.

Henceforth Senhor Franco stood alone, the best-hated and most calumniated man in Lisbon. It was in Lisbon that the Republicans had principally spread their doctrines, by gossip, pamphlets, and newspapers among the half-educated classes, who received with scandalised anger whatever accounts of Royal extravagance and of the wickedness of the Jesuits were furnished to them. If Senhor Franco was hated in Lisbon, the King was not much more popular. He himself had summed up the situation as “a Monarchy without Monarchists,” and the last Premier of the Monarchy, Senhor Teixeira de Sousa, declared that the Monarchy fell because it had against it the passion of many and the indifference of the majority. “There are no Royalists in Portugal,” said Senhor João Chagas, a good instance of the bad habit of calling Lisbon Portugal. The passions were concentrated in Lisbon, and the indifference in the provinces only served to throw the lurid politics of the capital into stronger relief.

The Civil List.

The adeantamentos, that is, sums advanced by the Treasury for the King’s expenses, were a favourite catchword of the Republicans, and a frequent motive of calumny. But when Senhor Franco proposed to increase the Civil List, which had remained stationary for the last three-quarters of a century at a conto (about £200) a day, and do away with the adeantamentos, the storm of opposition and abuse only increased.

Stormy Opposition.

Here was a firm and able statesman, anxious to carry through financial, political and social reforms, and it might have been expected that he would have received some support from those who had the interests of the country at heart. Perhaps the Republicans considered the reforms too late, or rather a little too early, since for them the first, the chief, reform was now a change of régime: reforms did not please them unless they could be carried out by themselves. But it was not the Republicans alone who were to blame for the loss of this great opportunity of restoring order and stable government in Portugal. If the Republicans shrieked, the Royalist parties were no less clamorous against Senhor Franco. All those whose interests were menaced by the proposed reforms, all the comfortable rotativists and political hypocrites, all those who wished to gain credit by themselves initiating the reforms, and hated them when coming from another, were united against Senhor Franco. Senhor Franco, however, did not lose his head but continued his work with calmness and courage. He succeeded in decreasing the deficit and giving some hope of gradually abolishing it altogether. But as the opposition increased he was obliged to increase the rigour of his dictatorship. Various newspapers were suspended and the censorship became very strict. The fact that the suspended newspapers included O Dia, then the organ of the Alpoimistas (that is, the Progressistas Dissidentes, under the leadership of Snr. José Alpoim), O Mundo, a Republican newspaper then in its eighth year, the Progressista Correio da Noite and the Regenerador Populo suffices to show the force of the opposition with which the hated “Dictator” had to contend, and also how impartial he was in his efforts to effect reforms which most disinterested persons acknowledged to be excellent and necessary. He had not begun by employing arbitrary methods. “The Republican party,” wrote a Portuguese journalist, “asked above all for liberty, and the first thing the Government of João Franco did was to give it liberty. He gave it liberty of the Press and of association; he allowed it to demonstrate noisily in streets and squares. What was the result? The Republicans declared in the newspapers that they did not want the liberty given them by the Government, and one newspaper even wrote: ‘The more liberty they give us the more we will require; we must force them to compromising violence or disgraceful compromise.’”

Party Passions.

Never have party passions so blinded all the politicians of a country to that country’s interests as in the violent and, one may well add, cowardly attacks on Senhor Franco. There was even a plot to kidnap him, and place him on a man-of-war in the Tagus. It is scarcely surprising that Senhor Franco should have been obliged to resort to methods more arbitrary, which of course drew scandalised cries of rage from those who had made them necessary. In Lisbon the lowest interpretation was placed on all his actions. Senhor Franco had no delight in violence, but he considered that it was the duty of a Government to govern, and that if this was rendered impossible for it by constitutional means it must govern as best it might. The dictatorship was only temporary, in fact the elections were fixed for April of the following year (1908). But with the extraordinary respect for convention and nice superficial scruples about formalities that characterises Portuguese politics (which sometimes seems to be a game to see who has the skill to govern most constitutionally and worst), a certain number of Royalists preferred to go over to the Republic than to acquiesce in anything so unconstitutional (and opposed to their interests) as the dictatorship.

Arrest of the Conspirators.

Could Senhor Franco have counted on the support of public opinion outside Lisbon he might have mastered the situation, but the mass of the people continued as usual remote and apathetic, and it only remained for him to order the arrest of those whose avowed object was to make government impossible. Never under the Monarchy was a Republican arrested because he was a Republican. Republicans were allowed to retain high office in the army and in the civil service. But the men now arrested were known to have entered into a definite conspiracy to overthrow the Government and to seize the person of the Premier, if not to kill him. In January, not for the first time, a turbulent Republican journalist, Snr. João Chagas, was arrested, as also a more dangerous because more underhand Republican, Snr. França Borges, of the Mundo. The arrest of the Republican deputy, Snr. Affonso Costa and of the Visconde de Ribeira Brava, followed a week later (28th January, 1908). Dr. Antonio José de Almeida had been arrested a few days before. These were the darlings of a certain and not the most orderly section of the Lisbon people, and on their arrest disturbances occurred which were suppressed by the Civil Guard. And here it may be remarked that while Snr. Franco held the perfectly legitimate view that order must be maintained at all costs, he could scarcely be held responsible for the way in which his orders were carried out in detail. The methods of the Lisbon police and soldiers of the Guard are strange and ill calculated to lessen the anger of a crowd. Even under the Republic mounted soldiers of the Guard have been known to slash with their naked swords at innocent persons standing on the pavement who did not amount in all to a dozen, and were not dreaming of revolt or rebellion, being armed only with the not very warlike weapons known as umbrellas. The suppression of riots in January, 1908, was no doubt characterised by the same methods. A decree of January 31st (anniversary of the rising at Oporto in 1891, from which the Republican movement really dates) came to set a fine edge on the indignation of the Lisbon Republicans, who had been schooled to believe the worst of Snr. Franco and the King. By a decree of the preceding November political crimes were to come before three judges, the Juge d’Instruction Criminelle and two coadjutors, their verdict to be without appeal. The new decree allowed the Government to interfere and banish the accused. (Not for a moment was there any idea of imprisoning these confessed conspirators in the Penitenciaria.)