Syria, Greece, Carthage, and the Iberian Peninsula were the first countries to succumb to the Roman arms outside of Italy. These conquests all occurred within the space of fifty-seven years (from 190 to 133 B.C.), and this was doubtless the period when emphyteusis was first employed upon an extensive scale. Originally, the tenants were liable to have their rents increased, and to be evicted at the pleasure of the state, and thus lose the benefit of any improvements effected by them. The result was, that no improvements were effected. The forests were cut down, the orchards destroyed, the lands exhausted by incessant cropping; and by the beginning of the present era the entire coasts of the Mediterranean were exploited.
This great historical fact is replete with significance—not only to Portugal, but also to the rest of the world, even to America, which, by abandoning its public lands to the rapacity of monopolists and the vandalism of ignorant immigrants, is preparing for itself a future filled with forebodings of evil.
The ruin of the lands of Carthage, Spain, etc. eventually hastened the ruin of Italy. It put an end to the legitimate supplies of grain which those countries had been accustomed to contribute; it forced their populations to crowd into already overcrowded Italy, and increase the requirements of food in a country which had been exploited like their own, and, though not so rapidly, yet by similar means;[1] and it gave rise to the servile wars, to the most corrupt period in Roman history, to the Empire, and to the endless series of consequences in its train.
After the Western Empire had apparently fallen beneath the Northern arms—that is to say, five hundred years later—and not until then, the Roman Code ameliorated the baneful tenure of emphyteusis. A law of the emperor Zenos (A.D. 474-491) fixed whatever had theretofore been uncertain in the nature and incidents of emphyteusis. The tenant was guaranteed from increase of rent and from eviction—the alienation of the property by the state being held thenceforth to affect the quit-rent only—and finally he obtained full power to dispose of the land, which nevertheless remained subject to the quit-rent in whatever hands it might be. Before these reforms were effected, Portugal was conquered by the Visigoths, the Roman proprietors of the soil were expelled, and their laws and institutions suppressed. This occurred in the year 476. Whether emphyteusis in any form remained is not quite certain, but it seems not; and during this government, and the Moorish one which superseded it in the year 711, the Iberian Peninsula enjoyed an interval of prosperity to which it had been a stranger for ages.
In the eleventh century this happy condition of affairs was disturbed by the appearance of certain Spanish crusading knights, who, issuing from the mountainous parts of the country adjacent to their own, began to war against the Moorish authorities. In the course of a century, and with little voluntary aid from the peasants, who distrusted them and their religious pretensions and promises of advantage, they managed to acquire possession of the country. Now, what do you suppose was one of the first acts committed by these adventurers? Nothing less than the re-enactment of the odious Roman tenure of emphyteusis, and that in its most ancient and worst form—liability to increased rent and to eviction; not only this, but with certain base services combined. The wretched inhabitants were required to work so many days in the week for these lords, to break up a certain amount of waste land; to furnish so many cattle; to kill so many birds; to provide (in rural districts remote from the sea) so many salt fish; to furnish so much incense or so many porringers, iron tools, pairs of shoes, etc.
Talk of the Western Empire having "declined and fallen," as Messrs. Gibbon and Wegg put it! Why, here it was again, and with the worst of its ancient crimes inscribed upon its code of law. Emphyteusis was reintroduced into Portugal by King Diniz (Dennis) in the year 1279, and was followed by its usual effects—ruin and depopulation. In 1394 was born Prince Henry. He was the son of John I. and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and was therefore the nephew of Henry IV. of England. Perceiving and commiserating the wretchedness of the people, and casting about him for a remedy, Henry saw but one: that was departure from the land, emigration, colonization, escape from the tyranny of the soil, of nobles and of ecclesiastics—a tyranny which both his illustrious rank and his piety forbade him to oppose. Hence his intense devotion to the discovery and colonization of strange lands, which is in vain to be accounted for on the ground of a mere passion, the only one usually advanced by unthinking historians.
The results of this mania, as it was then considered, of Prince Henry are well known—the discovery of Madeira, the Azores, Senegambia, Angola, Benguela, etc., and, after Prince Henry's death, the Cape of Good Hope, Goa, Macao, the islands, etc.; all of which were colonized by Portuguese. These colonies, and the commerce which sprang up with them, afforded outlets for the downtrodden serfs of Portugal. Such was the beneficial result of this partial measure of freedom that in the course of the following two centuries Portugal became one of the leading nations of the world, with a population of 5,000,000 and a flag respected in every clime.
Unhappily, this interval of prosperity to Portugal was the cause of infinite misery to the negro race. The discoveries in Africa and Asia afforded a career to the enslaved Portuguese; yet, by leading, as they did, to the discovery of America, they were eventually the cause of the slave-trade, which without America could not have flourished. Such will ever be the result of the attempt to palliate instead of cure evil. Moreover, the discovery of America and the resulting slave-trade were the cause of Portugal's retrogression to the point whence she had started in Prince Henry's time. When gold and slaves rendered maritime discovery profitable to the aristocratic class, all the nobles went into it—not only the aristocrats of Portugal, but those also of Spain, England, France, Holland, Italy. They all went into the trade of acquiring empires, and it is not to be wondered at if in this rivalry of greed and violence Portugal, exploited and burdened with serfdom and other features of bad government at home, was distanced and overcome. Her colonies were captured and reduced by foreign enemies, or invaded and ruined by one of the several political diseases from which she had never wholly rid herself. For example, the once magnificent city of Goa, which formerly contained a population of 150,000 Christians and 50,000 Mohammedans, is now an almost deserted ruin, with but 40,000 inhabitants, chiefly ecclesiastical.
When Pombal assumed the reins of government in 1750 the population of Portugal had been reduced to less than 2,000,000: there was neither agriculture, manufactures, army nor navy. Perceiving this state of affairs, and recognizing the cause of it, Pombal caused the vines to be torn up by the roots and corn planted in their place. Ruffianism was crushed, the Jesuits were banished, the nobility were taught to respect the civil law, the peasantry were encouraged. After twenty-seven years of reforms and prosperity Pombal was dismissed from office and the old abuses were reinstated, among them those worst incidents of emphyteusis which had been devised by the base ring of nobles and ecclesiastics who held the land in their grasp.
These abuses remained without material change until 1832, and thus you have a complete history of emphyteusis from the first to the last day of its institution in Portugal. In truth, however, its last day has not come even yet, for many of its incidents still linger in the code of laws.