[58] Born at Lisbon in 1875. He was a lieutenant in the Navy at the time of the Revolution, in preparing which (and in organising the Carbonarios) he had taken a principal part. After the Revolution he was raised to the rank of captain and granted a pension of 3 contos (£600).
[59] Joaquim Pereira Pimenta de Castro, born at Pias, near Vianna do Castello, in the province of Minho, in 1846. He entered the Army (Engineers) in October, 1867, and became captain in 1874, major in 1883, lieut.-colonel in 1887, colonel in 1892, general in 1900. He has published various works, all of a practical character, including “A Rational and Practical Solution of the Electoral Problem,” written in 1890, and translated into French and English in 1904.
[60] João Chagas, Cartas politicas (December, 1908).
[61] The decentralisation was to be less than that granted in 1878, which over-reached itself. Each Junta Geral was to be composed of twenty-five procuradores (proctors), whose duty it would be to look after the general interests and finance of the district, the State conceding part of its revenues to the local treasuries.
[62] Republican Ministers of Finance have taken up this project. On the 22nd of March, 1912, Snr. Sidonio Paes introduced a Bill, proposing that all duties, excepting those on corn, rice, sugar and colonial products, should be paid in gold. The idea, however, meets with opposition in the Lisbon commercial world. Snr. Anselmo de Andrade’s project referred to payment in gold of one half of the duty only.
[63] “Legislation for the moon,” according to the Republican O Intransigente.
[64] The President only receives 18 contos, under £4,000, a year.
[65] Dr. Manoel de Arriaga 121 votes, Dr. Bernardino Machado 86 votes (24th August, 1911). The first President of the Portuguese Republic comes of an ancient family and has a Basque name (“the place of stones,” or “a heap of stones,” arri being probably the same word as in Biarritz: two rocks). He was born at Horta on the 8th of July, 1840, and studied at Coimbra. For some years he was professor of English at the Lisbon Lycée. He was elected deputy for Madeira. Besides some well-known volumes of poems it may be noted that he published in 1889 an essay condemning the penitentiary system. Although Dr. Arriaga has never, during the last forty years or more, swerved from his Republican principles, he has done his utmost as President to moderate the action of the extremists, and to secure for the Republic that respect and affection which are universally felt towards himself.
[66] Snr. Chagas, more pamphleteer than statesman, is, like many educated Portuguese, intimately acquainted with Paris and with modern French literature. In English literature his interest is slight, if we may judge from his remark that “Hamlet is very boring.” Yet he admires that modern Hamlet, M. Anatole France.
[67] Dr. Brito Camacho regarded his party as a kind of make-weight between the Radical and Conservative tendencies.