Should it be asked how it was possible that the cowardly, superstitious, and weak king could approve of such a revolutionary method of proceeding, this will be best explained by calling to mind that, from the time of the disputes with the Jesuits, he lived in a continual state of fear, not only of the order, but of his nobility and of his brother Dom Pedro. He had therefore completely thrown himself into the arms of his minister, who surrounded the king and himself with guards, relying upon whose protection the weak king rejoiced that by the instrumentality of his minister he was able to exercise a dominion uncontrolled by the people or the nobles, such as was enjoyed by Louis XIV or Frederick of Prussia.
Pombal’s measures with respect to trade, commerce, industry, and agriculture were neither the best nor free from selfish views; but they roused up the Portuguese and awakened them from the slumber and idleness of their monkish life, although this rousing was frequently not performed with a very gentle hand. We shall therefore attribute no higher importance to the school of commerce established by Pombal, to the solemn and public examinations which were held in his presence, and to the public attention which he thereby roused, than that he opposed a school of practical life to the prevailing monkish institutions, and a secular celebration which bore upon education and life to ecclesiastical processions. He also contributed very largely to the improvement of agriculture in the province of Alemtejo, although we should feel by no means disposed to undertake the defence of all those measures which he adopted with this view; the same may be said of the great canal of Oeyras and of the fair established in the same place. He provided for the security of the city repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes; he provided an abundant supply of water by means of magnificent conduits, and erected numerous noble public edifices. But the means, however useful, were not the less tyrannical and cruel. The unfortunate inhabitants whose dwellings had escaped the terrific power of the earthquake were obliged to pull down their houses and build them up again at their own cost, according to a prescribed plan and on a given scale, if, either in their external appearance or by their situation, they interfered with Pombal’s magnificent plan of broad streets and beautiful houses. Travellers were struck with admiration at his immense architectural structures, the arsenal, the exchange which was connected with it, and the market-house, and it was said there was nothing in Europe of their kind to be compared with these buildings; but, in fact, the only real glory in the matter was that Pombal’s buildings were all erected in the taste and style of the new age, whereas those of João V retained all the characteristics of the Middle Ages; for the exchange and the market-house were wholly destitute of merchants and wares, and there was no suitable army or fleet to correspond to the arsenal.
Pombal was at that time the object of the most deadly hatred as a tyrant in the nation which he was desirous of reforming; this alone was sufficient to render everything hateful which originated with him amongst a people whose condition he was indeed unable immediately to improve, but whom he annoyed, provoked, and tormented by means of his state police and his numerous and detested decrees. He durst not, in consequence, venture out of his house without a guard, and was obliged to have recourse to the most hateful means of maintaining the respect due to his station and rank. Wraxall,[i] who, as regards hearsays, mixes together truth and falsehood, stories, footmen’s reports, and lies of all kinds, but who is deserving of credit when he speaks as an eye-witness, informs us that, as late as the year 1772, he found all the prisons full of unfortunate individuals, some of whom had been buried in these living graves for fifteen years.
The advantages therefore which Portugal gained through Pombal’s administration, and which were loudly celebrated through the whole of Europe, rested upon a very unstable foundation. The most remarkable of these advantages were: security from assassination, which Lisbon had never enjoyed before the time of Pombal’s rule; the rebuilding and adornment of the capital; cleanliness of the streets; a free trade in books; an academy which deserved well of the friends of the sciences; a disciplined army, etc. All these momentous changes and creations, however, wholly depended for their continuance upon the absolute power of the minister, and that again upon the life of the king. As long as José lived, Pombal maintained his influence, and pursued the same energetic course both towards priests and soldiers. He put limits to the number of brotherhoods and ecclesiastical orders, and availed himself of the aid of his sister, who was herself a nun, to carry his reforming principles even into the nunneries. Military affairs he conducted in the same manner, for he never hesitated to cashier whole regiments if they transgressed his army regulations respecting discipline, or suffered themselves to be guilty of acts of injury or violence towards their officers, who were gathered from all nations and countries.
The king, who was nearly eighty years old, no sooner became seriously ill than Pombal foresaw his fate, for the queen was appointed regent and he was kept far removed from the sick-bed of the monarch. He therefore, shortly before José’s death, which took place in February, 1777, preferred a request to the regent to be relieved from his official duties, and appealed, as a reason for his request, to his advanced age and his bodily infirmities. In this remarkable document he gives a brief but comprehensive statement of the whole of the arrangements and condition of all the departments of the government at that time. No person who reads this paper can fail to be pleased with the ability which it displays and to admire its author, who had raised the financial condition of the country to a degree of prosperity which it had not reached for centuries; he appended a paper to his petition for leave to retire from public life, in which a correct account is not only given of the diamonds in the royal cabinet, but in which it is stated that a sum of 76,000,000 cruzados in hard cash [about £6,400,000 or $32,000,000] was deposited in the royal treasury.
THE NEW QUEEN AND REACTION
[1777-1785 A.D.]
The king however died before the regent had returned her answer; he was succeeded by his daughter, Donna Maria I, to whom Pombal preferred his request anew on the 1st of March, 1777, which was granted to him by a decree of the date of the 4th of the same month, drawn up in a kindly spirit. The regent, at the end of February, had already released from imprisonment several of the clergy and persons of distinction who had been incarcerated as being implicated in the conspiracy against the king’s life, under the appearance of having taken this step by her husband’s command: in the beginning of March everything was changed. The new and unholy marriage which was celebrated in the royal family, for which the pope had granted a dispensation, may be regarded as a preliminary announcement of the return to the old order of things: this marriage, now solemnised, had been commanded by the king immediately before his death. It appeared as if it were not enough that the reigning queen should be married to her own paternal uncle, but the son of this marriage must be further allied with his mother’s sister, Donna Maria Benedicta.
The whole history of this incestuous family furnishes proofs enough that, although the pope might sanction and bless such marriages for money, they had the stamp of retribution upon them. This was soon evident in the case of the new queen Donna Maria. Immediately after her father’s death she assumed the reins of government, which she shared with her husband Dom Pedro; soon afterwards, however, she exhibited traces of insanity, and at a later period became completely mad. As her unsoundness of mind was closely connected with her excessive superstition, she did not wait for Pombal’s removal from the presidency of the council, which took place a few weeks afterwards, but immediately proceeded to take steps for the restoration of all those religious abuses which had previously existed in the kingdom. She restored to the papal nuncio and the saints of the Jesuits all the honours and distinctions which they had previously enjoyed among the people. The nuncio immediately played again the character of a spiritual monarch; and the pope received half a million of florins as an indemnification for the expense to which he had been put by the support of the Jesuits who were landed at Cività Vecchia. The estates of the ridiculous patriarchate were given back; the holidays, confraternities, and tribunals of the Middle Ages restored, and those saints of the Romish church who had been the enemies of all temporal sovereigns were again reinstated in the honours of the church and the calendar. This was the case with Gregory VII, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Francis Borgia, whose names had been erased from the calendar by the orders of Pombal. All this took place long before Pombal received permission to retire from his official duties.
Hundreds were liberated from their subterranean dungeons, among whom were bishops, grandees of the kingdom, and members of families of the first distinction, and especially the sixty Jesuits who had been restored to freedom upon the command of the queen; all these combined and allowed the weak-minded lady no rest or peace till she let loose her jurists upon the reformer, with the forms and formulas of their Byzantine criminal law, of which its codes furnish abundance, for the torment of all those who are unfortunate enough to live in countries in which Byzantine justice is honoured. Some idea of the number and power of the minister’s enemies at court may be deduced from the fact that he had hunted forth whole crowds of that court mob which, under all sorts of titles and pretences, had wasted or spent on themselves and their pleasures the revenues of the kingdom, or sacrificed them to his own creatures; and that again he had not only met the expenditure, but accumulated a large reserve-fund in the treasury of a kingdom whose exchequer had always been previously empty. In the royal treasury he kept always on hand 40,000,000 cruzados, and in the tithe exchequer 30,000,000, which was a thing long unheard of in the history of Portuguese finances.