predecessors.  It is said of Pedro II. that “he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount.”  But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney.  Easy-going and self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing in forma pauperis among 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 L80,000 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 L2,250 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 gachis.  He found his man in Joao 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 L40,000.  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 may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship.  Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt.  “When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb,” said the King, “he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp.  ‘What are you about?’ asked Frederick.  ’Your Majesty, I am deserting,’ stammered the soldier.  ‘Wait till to-morrow,’ replied Frederick calmly, ’and if the battle goes against us, we will desert together.’” Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the field of battle.