The following paper contains the substance of a remarkable letter and accompanying documents recently received from Portugal: 

LISBON, September, 1875.

You wish to know what truth there is in the cable reports of “a drought in the north and south of Portugal, and a threatened famine in two or three provinces.”  Shall I tell you all?  Well, then, Heaven nerve me for the task!  I shall have an unpleasant story to narrate.

You, who have been in Portugal, need not be reminded that the kingdom consists of six provinces—­Minho, Tras-os-Montes, Beira, Estremadura, Alemtejo and Algarve.  In the early part of this summer a drought affected the whole kingdom.  Toward the end of July abundant rain fell in Minho, where two products only are raised—­wine ("port wine”) and maize.  The rain, which, had it fallen in Alemtejo, the principal wheat-province of the kingdom, would have done incalculable good, benefited neither the vineyards of Minho nor the maize-crop anywhere.  The consequence is, that this last-named crop, the principal bread-food of the country, has failed, and famine prevails throughout the land.  Having lived in America, I know what you, so accustomed to freedom and plenty, will say to this: 

“France, Sprain, Morocco, England—­all these countries are near to Portugal.  If she is short of bread, let her simply exchange wine for it, and there need be no fears of a famine.”

Ah, my dear American friends, little do you suspect the artlessness of this reply.  Know, then, that those who own the wines of Portugal do not lack for bread, and those who lack for bread do not own the wines; that the first of these classes are the aristocrats and foreigners who live in the cities or abroad, and the second the people at large; that there exists an abyss between these classes so profound that no political institutions yet devised have been able to bridge it; that there is no credit given by one class to the other, and few dealings occur between them; and that the laws of Portugal discourage the importation of grain into the kingdom.

You are a straightforward people, and dive at once to the bottom of a subject.  “Why do not the Portuguese devote themselves so largely to the cultivation of grain that there need never be danger of famine?” you will now ask.  My answer to this is:  The people do not own the land.

“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?”