falls to five bushels per head, and unless the government suspends the
corn laws for the whole country--which since 1855 it has usually done
on such occasions--famine ensues. The nation (excepting, of course,
the court and aristocracy, who live in or near Lisbon and Oporto) is
thus kept always at the brink of starvation, and every mishap in these
artificial and tyrannical arrangements consigns fresh thousands to the
grave.

The population of Portugal was the same in 1798 that it is
to-day--viz., about four millions--and there has been no time between
those periods when it was greater. Knowing, as we do, that the law
of social progress is growth--in other words, that the condition of
individual development, both physical and intellectual, is that degree
of freedom which finds its expression in the increase of numbers--what
does this portentous fact of a stationary population bespeak? Simply,
the utmost degradation of body and mind; vice in its most hideous
forms; filth, disease, unnatural crimes; a hell upon earth. These are
always the characteristics of nations which have been prevented from
growing. The melancholy proofs of a condition of affairs in Portugal
which admits of this description shall presently be forthcoming.

Antonio de Leon Pinelo, who was one of the greatest lawyers and
historians that Spain ever produced, very profoundly remarked that no
man could possibly understand the history of slavery in America who
had not first mastered the subject of Spanish _encomiedas_. With equal
truth it may be said that the solution of Portuguese history lies
in the subject of _emphyteusis_. Emphyteusis (Greek: zmphutehuis,
"ingrafting," "implanting," and perhaps, metaphorically,
"ameliorating") is a lease of land where the tenant agrees to improve
it and pay a certain rent. The origin of this tenure is Greek, and it