the hospital.]

[Footnote 12: In some districts of Portugal the proportion of married
to single persons is as 1 to 173!]

The true cause of Portuguese immorality and crime is the unequal
distribution of wealth, which leaves the mass of the inhabitants a
prey to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the tyranny of the powerful
and wealthy and the despair of insecurity. The origin of this evil
state of affairs was the tenure of emphyteusis: its active and
unfeeling promoters have been always the nobility and ecclesiastics,
and its only powerful enemy, the only hope of the people, the Crown.

After what has been mentioned it is unnecessary to speak of minor
crimes--- of street assassinations, highway robberies and the
like. Your own McCulloch will inform you that according to official
information reported to the Cortes there occurred in one year, and
merely in the two districts of Oporto and Guarda, no less than three
hundred and forty-two assassinations and four hundred and sixty
robberies. It is true that life is not quite so insecure now as when
McCulloch wrote. Some few rays of light have penetrated the profound
abyss of misery and evil in which the country was then plunged;
nevertheless, the improvement has been but slow and partial, and
nothing short of revolution can accelerate it. There is but one man
in the world who possesses the means to render that revolution
successful, and that man--His Majesty Dom Pedro II., the emperor of
Brazil--is now, or soon will be, on his way to the United States.
May he not peruse in vain this sad account of famine and crime in
Portugal!