THE TROUBLE WITH PORTUGAL.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 402, 11 January 1890, Page 2

THE TROUBLE WITH PORTUGAL.

REVENGE DEMANDED. Loxdox. January 8 The Press insist on the insult to the British flag in Zambesi being revenged, as otherwise the natives would despise the British and their flags. The squadron at Zanzibar is to be enforced by eight war ships. Gibraltar and the mouth of the Tagus are being fortified with torpedoes. Portugal has made a reply to the communication from Lord Salisbury, the English Prime Minister, but the purport of the message has not been made known. January 9. The details which have recently been received in regard to the outrages committed by Major Serpa Pinto are regarded by Lord Salisbury as being merely an expansion of the accounts of the incident originally received. He has demanded that Portugal shall instruct her oUloera to maintain the statu quo. Portugal will comply with the demand that things should be restored as nearly as possible to their original condition, provided that England issues similar Instructions to her own officers.

In an article in the Melbourne Age, the following reference is made to the Portugal dispute :—The crux of the whole question is identical with that settled by the international conference some years ago in regard to the Congo region; though the present difficulty is a rather more serious one, inasmuch as the position of the Portuguese on the east coast is much clearer and stronger than it was on the western side of the con* tinent. However, it is obvious that Portugal, though she miy choose to fume and fret for an hour on her little stage, will have to give way. We have had a firm expression of opinion from the nations assembled in conference that Central Africa is to be opened up to free commercial enterprise, and that no nationality has the right to seal the natural exits of trade by a system of prohibitive tolls. Portugal will, therefore, have to abate her high and mighty pretensions in regard to the Zambesi River, and in her feelings of national mortification she will have no single sympathiser among civilised nations, The grand work of discovery accomplished by the W old Portuguese navigators belongs only to remote history. What the present generation of men does know is that Portugal was the first country to estab? lish the slave trade and the last to abolish it; that Portuguese subjects are even now known to be aiders and abettors of, if not actual participators in, the accursed traffic ; that natives of Africa are not one whit ths better either in religion or civilisation for Portuguese supremacy where such exists ; that in Portu* guese colonies on the African Coast eoolesia?* tioal ruins, the triumph of fetishism and the debasement of native life tell their own story of misgovernment and mismanagement; that Portuguese commercial enterprise in these regions is dead as a door nail; and that Portuguese supremacy in any district of Africa simply exerts a hindering instead of a quickening influence on the development of the vast continent. The complete decadence of Portugal as a co’onising power is evident to every traveller both in Africa and in Asia, Let Bombay and Goa, for example, on the Malabar shores of India, be contrasted. Goa is by some centuries the oldest town. But while in Bombay we see a busy teeming popu« lation, tramway cars, and loaded bullock cart* jostling each other in the crowded thorough? fares, scores of cotton mills piercing the tropical sky with their tall chimneys, hundreds of vessels anchored in the bay^—in short every visible sign of a prosperous and contented population, in Goa the visitor beholds only deserted streets, a dozen antiquated native boats, a few hundreds of sleepy listless Inhabi* tants; there is no hum of busy commerce or manufacture, but beyond the modern town in the deserted jungle are miles—literally miles—of ruined churches, monasteries and solid stone buildings. No sight in the world, I venture to say, brings so vividly into contrast the vitality of England with the complete deadness of modern Portugal. In Africa, the story told to the eye is, if not so striking, just the same; Zanzibar, which has been built up mainly by British enterprise, is in its way, as different from Quilhmane as U Bombay from Goa.