Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

The Royalists.

The Restoration must be peaceful and gradual if it is to be permanently successful. The extreme usefulness to the Republic of Royalist conspiracies has been fully recognised by the “White Ants” and Carbonarios, and the Royalists themselves are now convinced that it is not by incursion or conspiracy that they will advance their interests. They realise that without any such methods Royalism is likely to gain strength, has indeed already done so. No doubt many distrust the idea of the accession of Dom Miguel because of the reactionary traditions of the Miguelist party, a distrust antiquated but not unnatural. On the other hand, the Manuelist cause is weak because King Manoel, being then in his teens and brought suddenly to the throne by the murder of his father and brother, had not time to show that he possessed the qualities of a strong ruler. Strangely enough, some Portuguese who profess and call themselves Portuguese, have no hesitation in saying that the best solution would be a foreign prince, English or Italian, imposed by foreign intervention.

Longing for Peace and Stability.

The real inference is that they desire above all things a strong and stable Government, and are heartily tired of a state of affairs which seems to make a continuity of policy or any long period of order and quiet alike impossible. A Restoration in a few years’ time may best secure such continuity, and if there is a single fair and practical reform opposed by the Royalists the Republicans will do well to name it.

Monarchy and Empire.

Not that a Restoration need be considered of any very great importance: if the moderate Republicans can provide a stable Government sensible Royalists would no doubt cease from all opposition to the Republic. But, of course, a Monarchy is in accordance with the old traditions of Portugal, and has value with regard to the colonial empire, in which unrest has increased, and very naturally, since the Revolution: the natives more readily yield obeisance to a king than to an abstraction. And there would be no danger of the Royalists setting themselves to persecute in their turn after a Restoration, since they are well aware how great would be the outcry throughout Europe. A few political careers, certainly, would be cut short, but perhaps the country would not be greatly the loser. The Monarchy has value, too, in international relations, and the Republicans do not attach sufficient importance, for instance, to King Carlos’ foreign visits and to the visits of foreign princes to Lisbon during his reign. They class them among the extravagances of the Monarchy. These advantages will probably be thrown into even greater relief by another five years of Republic.

Labels.

If the adversaries of the Republic will but refrain from all movement of rebellion or incursion, the next five years will show with sufficient clearness whether the permanent tranquillity ardently desired by the Portuguese people is to be labelled Monarchy or Republic. It is after all little more than a label (the label “Monarchy” being more useful in an Empire); the thing required is a Government willing and able to employ the services of all Portuguese in the work of making Portugal once more great and prosperous, to give free scope to individual energies under a régime of true liberty and toleration.

Trifles.

It has been the folly of the Republicans not to yield on small, unessential questions. They have laid stress on such secondary matters as the new flag (the loud and ugly colours of which will never be readily accepted by the Portuguese nation, or so affirm those who know the Portuguese intimately), on the alteration of names of streets and squares throughout the country. They have made a parade of much legislation. A new heaven and a new earth. Yet it would have been a wiser policy on their part not to make so much of these little harassing novelties, but more quietly to work at necessary essential changes.