Portuguese people

“ But in order to become acquainted with the Portuguese people it is necessary to go far afield, to the remote villages of Alemtejo or Minho or of the Serra da Estrella, and, the means of doing this being often primitive or non-existent, the traveller contents himself with swift generalities derived from observation of the inhabitants of the towns, precisely, that is, where the Portuguese most displays his weaknesses and where the population is most mixed. ”

“ It was not allowed to develop naturally after the first third of that great century. Even to-day there are said to be certain politicians who would dress it up in a suit of ready-made clothes which has caught their fancy in some shop window when they were on a visit to Paris. The Portuguese people deserves better than that, and if it can be given a national government, and a national policy and ideals, it may yet surprise Europe. ”

“ They are as remote from the twentieth century as are the days of Romulus and Remus, and their customs and those of the quaint villages set in the deep ravines of the Serra are worth a careful study, belonging as they do to an age long past, before civilisation sweeps them away. Read or write the inhabitants cannot, books and newspapers are unknown; but they maintain an old-world courtesy and dignity of bearing which are attractive. They constitute one of the most characteristic parts of the Portuguese people, one of the most interesting elements in the infinite variety of Portuguese life. ”

“ In the West the Portuguese settlement in Brazil was a genuine colony, or branch of the Portuguese nation, because here there existed no earlier civilised people to be dominated. But both in East and West the activities of the Portuguese were from the first subjected to an over-rigid control by the home government. Eager to make the most of a great opportunity for the national advantage, the rulers of Portugal allowed no freedom to the enterprise of individuals. ”

“ The Brazilians, who never forget that they were for a time, during the French invasion of Portugal, their own mother country, and head of the whole Portuguese people, cherish their national literary traditions with more warmth than do the Spaniards of the New World, and produce quite as much, in the way of poetry and belles lettres, as do the writers of Portugal. They have a quick susceptibility to ideas, like that of Frenchmen or Russians, but have not so far made any great contributions to science, either in the fields of physical enquiry or in those of economics, philology, or history. ”

“ Latin nations give more importance to literature than is perhaps attributed to it in England, and the fact that Portuguese literature and Portuguese history meet with little sympathy or study in England undoubtedly has its effect in Portugal when it is compared with the attitude of Germany. The difference leaps to the eyes of all educated persons in Portugal, and it must not be forgotten that in Portugal the uneducated people—apart from the trained demagogues’ bands in the cities—has no part or parcel in the affairs of the nation. ”

“ The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself to a triumphant foreigner? For my own part, I found a kind of gentle, unobtrusive politeness even among those Portuguese who knew I was English when I went to Lisbon on the last occasion of the two nations quarrelling about a mud flat on the Zambesi. ”

“ The expectations of the people have been too [14] frequently disappointed for it to set great store now by political promises, but the Portuguese have a real love of their country for which they are willing to sacrifice much—everything, it sometimes seems, except personal vanity and party intrigues. ”

“ And since in the matter of political disturbances the end is not yet, and a strident minority is likely for some years to come to impose itself in Portugal and attempt to impose itself on public opinion abroad, crying out that all criticism of it springs from hatred of Portugal, it is of importance to distinguish between this minority of misguided, unscrupulous and half-educated persons, and the true people of Portugal. ”

“ In the thirteenth century, indeed, Portugal reached its widest European limits, but the energies, alike of the kings and of the people, seem to have been expended rather in consolidating their conquests and in cultivating and inhabiting the large regions of land left waste by the long-continued struggle. ”

“ While Spain was extending her dominions westward, little Portugal was building up an even greater empire in both hemispheres. In the fifteenth century, this hardy people, confined to their coast and without possibility of expanding inwards, had seen that their future lay upon the water. To the possessor of sea power the ocean makes of every land bordering on it a frontier, vulnerable to them and impervious to the enemy. The first ventures of the Portuguese were naturally in the lands near by, the North African coast and the islands known as the Madeiras and the Azores. ”

“ Now the Portuguese, a people attractive to those who live among them, have also had a striking history. They are a spirited people, an adventurous people, a poetical people. For more than a century, when they were exploring the oceans and founding a dominion in India, they played a great part in the world, and though they have never quite recovered the position, wonderful for so small a country, which they then held, and have produced no later poet equal to Camoens, men of practical force and men of intellectual brilliance have not been wanting. ”

“ Our friend told us that he has seen a Portuguese gentleman, wanting a copper, take his snuff-box and present it to a beggar, who would take a pinch with the air of a noble, and shower a thousand blessings on the head of the donor in return. “The truth is, that the Portuguese as a nation are the kindest people I have ever met,” observed our friend. “They think charitably and act charitably, and do not despise each other; they are kindly affectionate one to another. ”

“ Brazil as the child of Portugal inherited the English good feeling, her independence from the Mother Country was effected without any prolonged bitterness, and with the actual assistance of England. When, then, Brazil saw the people sprung from the cradle of her race fighting side by side with the ancient friend of both she was deeply stirred. Portuguese merchants prosper in large numbers in Brazil, Portuguese news daily fills space in the Brazilian newspapers ”

“ Every great—or small—landowner who takes a personal interest in his property, every non-political politician—the phrase is no contradiction in terms—who studies not rhetoric but reality, every Portuguese, however humble, who cultivates his own garden, whether that garden be the Portuguese language or literature or soil or subsoil or industry, will go a step towards constituting a real Portugal of the Portuguese, and will deserve as many laurels of his country as crown the brows of the old Conquistadores. ”

“ But the discoveries and conquests followed, the magic of the sea, the mystery of the East wove a spell over the imagination of the Portuguese, the country was drained of men, devastated by plague and famine. Lisbon and the East absorbed energies hitherto given to the soil. Portugal, moreover, was doomed to share Spain’s losses during the period 1580-1640, and later was ravaged by frequent civil wars. In fine one might expect to find a dwindling miserable population, dying out from sheer exhaustion. ”

“ That is a [Pg xi] fact that must uplift and inspire those who study Portugal’s history or consider her future. For the Portuguese of the sixteenth century fought not against or not only against hordes of undisciplined savages, but against Moors and Turks highly civilised and well equipped with artillery.
Perhaps the secret of their success is that their motto was “God, King, and Country,” and that each man among them relied, under Heaven, on himself, not on this or that sect or party or philosophy, election promises or political programmes. ”

“ Many of the higher nobility—all that was best in Portugal—were too proud to engage in trade in the New World. Others went out in order to amass wealth by whatever means in the shortest possible time. The colonies were mercilessly exploited by the mother country. A close system of protection prevented foreign nations from trading with the Portuguese colonies, and the Portuguese themselves did little or nothing for the development of their resources. ”

“ Yet most often the matter has been necessarily superficial, and a few outstanding features, a murder, a revolution, the methods of a secret society, have laid hold on public attention. The Portuguese is, therefore, apt to be regarded less as a poetical dreamer, heir of the glories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, than as a political schemer, with a pistol in one pocket and a bomb in another. ”

“ With a population so docile and ready to learn, above all so inclined to prefer some distant uncertainty to the reality before them, it is all-important to have a strong non-political influence in each parish, whether that influence be of priest or professor, doctor or landowner. Without some such nucleus more and more will vagueness and bewilderment drive the peasant in a stream of emigration to Lisbon and Brazil, and Portugal become denationalised.
Scope for all Portuguese. ”

“ The French have ravaged the country with fire and sword, and shed the blood of its sons like water; the French buy not its fruits and loathe its wines, yet there is no bad spirit in Portugal towards the French. The reason of this is no mystery; it is the nature not of the Portuguese only, but of corrupt and unregenerate man, to dislike his benefactors, who, by conferring benefits upon him, mortify in the most generous manner his miserable vanity. ”

“ To this I cannot agree, for though I admit that a number of colonial Portuguese are slave traders, and that slavery is prevalent on the mainland and on the islands, I must, in fairness to the Portuguese, point out first that the Portuguese have a kindly nature to which one can appeal, and secondly that signs are not wanting of an awakening of the conscience of the Portuguese nation in a manner which may lead to a thorough cleansing of the colonial possessions of the Republic. ”

“ There is a degree of wretchedness and want among the lower class of people which is not anywhere so common as among the Spanish and Portuguese settlements. ”

“ Foreigners may be inclined to smile when they see foreign customs and institutions (as the English parliamentary system) distorted and misapplied in Portugal, but for all that is genuinely Portuguese they can have nothing but admiration and respect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Portuguese race has unquestionably filled a most distinguished part in the world. At the period of which we write it had gloriously recovered its national independence, and was renowned alike for its splendid literature, its famous geographical discoveries,—more especially those of Bartholomew Diaz, Vasco de Gama, Cabral, and Magalhaens,—and its magnificent colonial possessions in the east as well as in the west; and that the race has not lost all its energy is proved by such exploits of the present day as those of Serpa Pinto and others. ”

“ The problem consists in educating them without depriving them of their qualities, in civilisation without the demoralising effect of great cities; and indeed in the coming age of rapid communications city life will no doubt be largely a thing of the past. The educated Portuguese of Lisbon, far gone in introspective analysis and pessimism, is inclined readily to believe that the Portuguese are a dying and decadent race; but the truer view is that the Portuguese nation is still unborn. ”

“ Everywhere Rhode Islanders turn, the Portuguese presence is seen. It is seen in the dozens of social clubs throughout our State. It is felt in the excitement of the Feshta and the dignity of the religious procession. It is represented here today by community leaders who are from all walks of life.
This contribution is felt in many other States and hundreds of communities across this Nation.
Portugal is a close and valued ally.
Trade between our two nations is active and will surely grow. ”

“ In an instant was seen to fall the standard of Portugal which floated before on the loftiest tower of the Castle, while its place was taken in another instant by a foreign flag surmounted by the imperial eagle! To describe the outraged feelings of the Portuguese, to paint their indignation and horror, is impossible. Their loyalty and their national pride are almost the only virtues which they retain. ”

“ But despite their obstinate resolution to part with no inch of territory, the Portuguese have by no means learnt to think imperially; indeed, the interest in the colonies seems only to flicker into life when there is thought to be some danger of losing them. And it is clear that generations must elapse before the most painstaking and energetic action on their part meets with financial reward. Many observers have thus come to the conclusion that Portugal would be well advised to sell a part of her enormous overseas possessions. ”