the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of
his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had
not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their
times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a
day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other
members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and
there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would
suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to
pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a
matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the
treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had
expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The
total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in
millions of pounds.

These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and
administration, rendered even the _cacique_-chosen Cortes unruly, and
our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a
"thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary _gâchis_. He
found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not
as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of
personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great
private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's
notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies
diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a
degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious,
arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really
strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political
insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no
plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it