"What! Were the reforms of Pombal, the French Revolution, the
Portuguese revolution of 1820 and the various constitutions since that
date, the abolition of serfdom and mortmain, and the law of 1832, all
ineffectual to emancipate the Portuguese peasant from the thralldom of
land?"

Alas! they were indeed all in vain, and the Portuguese peasantry
stands to-day at the very lowest step of European civilization--far
beneath all others. The number of agricultural workers in Portugal is
about eight hundred and seventy-five thousand. Of this number,
some seven hundred thousand are hired laborers, farm-servants,
_emphyteutas_ (you shall presently know the meaning of this ominous
word) and metayers; that is to say, persons who may cultivate only
such products as their employers or landlords choose, and the latter
in their greed and short-sightedness always choose that the former
shall cultivate wine. The remainder, or some one hundred and
seventy-five thousand, consist chiefly of small proprietors, owning
three, four, five and ten acre patches of land, often intersected by
other properties, and therefore not adapted for the cultivation of
grain: such of the _emphyteutas_ and metayers as are practically free
to cultivate what they please make up the remainder of this class.

The quantity of land devoted to grain is therefore exactly what the
aristocratic land-owners choose to make it; and, never suspecting that
a well-fed peasant is more efficient as a laborer than a famished one,
they have made it barely enough, in good years, to keep the miserable
population from entirely perishing. The product in such years is about
six bushels of edible grain per head of total population, together
with a little pulse and a taste of fish or bacon on rare occasions. In
unfavorable years, like the present one, the product of edible grain