opposed to me were so various, that, notwithstanding every effort
on the part of my friends there, R .was nearly a month before I
had collected the information, whicha I apprehend must ere this
have been laid before the public, and which, scanty as it may
seem, is, I have been assured, all that exists on the subject.
It has almost always been the. custom with every Portuguese,
holding à distinguished appointment,* such *as That ôf a minister
or governor, to preserve copies of all the despatches and instructions
written and received by him during his administration, as
well as of every other official document, and to have them bound
together on his retirement, and deposited in the family library,
like any other historical volume, for his -,own justification, and for
the honour and instruction of his descendants. Thus, much has
escaped in manuscript, whieh-would have been condemned by that
Inquisition which allowed, no man a, bible, which authorised the
Custom-House to rob the foreigner even of his prayer-book,
which stole any man from his family whom à malignant or designing
neighbour fee’d them to impale, and which had not even
forbearance enough to reply, “ Monsieur, vous êtes bien curieux,”
(as the guard did to a poor Frenchman hurried, away to the
Pastille,) when their,victim dared to entreat au explanation beyond
the vague charge of impiety. Some of the nobility, no doubt, as
liberal lovers of literature, would always have been ready to open
these manuscript volumes, to any inquirer who had desired to
throw light on Portuguese diplomacy and Portuguese discoveries,
for both of which a blank seems to have been left in modem
history;—but the greater number have hitherto been, either too
narrow-minded and suspicious to do so, or, occupying their whole
lives to prove that “ Kings have descended from them, and not
they from kings”—a vaunt not unfrequently blazoned in letters
•An account of’ the discoveries of the Portuguese the interior of Angola and
Mozambique.
of gold in the palaces of the provinces, have been ignorant of
every volume they possessed beyond their genealogies- At the
present moment, however, even these men are disposed to oblige
those who are occupied in useful research; not from any generous
interest in it, but because they feel themselves just now entirely
eclipsed in public life, and therefore endeavour to appear liberal
in private, not only in exoneration Of themselves, but out of opposition
to the constitutionalists,
Not a few, perhaps, of the more enlightened nobility would be
disposed to join the better cause, in the hope of gradually inducing
a government more worthy of that, cause, were it not for
the coarseness of manner, vulgarity of language, slovenly habits,
and contempt of refinement, whether intellectual or physical,
which, though felt by few, has been affected by many of the. liberal
party, with the short-sighted and unworthy view of pleasing the
lower order of their constituents; who, instead of being attached
by it, have shrewdly enough construed it into a discovery, that the
differences between themselves and their deputies were purely
imaginary, and that they might just as well elect one of their own
class. If the constitutionalists consider the nobility as an unnatural
aristocracy, supported by accident and court favour, and
not by superior, achievement, virtue,! and intelligence,—an aristocracy,
which had monopolised all the places of profit, yet almost
always remained debtors to the revenue for their unfair proportion
of those arbitrary taxes which were squeezed, without abatement
out of the hard earnings of the labourer: if they could not!help
feeling this, they should at least wish the educated gentleman to
preserve that sort of dignity, to!give that evidence of his superiority,
which would warrant the lower class to look up to him
with confidence and expectation, and to protect his privileges from
attack or intrusion on the part of the more worthless of their own
body; as they would do, were it once made manifest that the
B 2