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 was probably first adopted in Rome after the conquest of the Achaean League (B.C. 146), when Greece became a Roman province.  It was carried into Carthage B.C. 145, and into Spain and Portugal about B.C. 133, when those countries fell beneath the Roman arms.  Whenever this occurred the first act of the conquerors was to assume the ownership of the land.  They then leased it on emphyteusis, either to the original occupiers, to their own soldiers, or to settlers ("carpet-baggers").  The rent was called vectigal, and decurions (corporals in the army) were usually employed to collect it and administer the lands.

Syria, Greece, Carthage, and the Iberian Peninsula were the first countries to succumb to the Roman arms outside of Italy.  These conquests all occurred within the space of fifty-seven years (from 190 to 133 B.C.), and this was doubtless the period when emphyteusis was first employed upon an extensive scale.  Originally, the tenants were liable to have their rents increased, and to be evicted at the pleasure of the state, and thus lose the benefit of any improvements effected by them.  The result was, that no improvements were effected.  The forests were cut down, the orchards destroyed, the lands exhausted by incessant cropping; and by the beginning of the present era the entire coasts of the Mediterranean were exploited.

This great historical fact is replete with significance—­not only to Portugal, but also to the rest of the world, even to America, which, by abandoning its public lands to the rapacity of monopolists and the vandalism of ignorant immigrants, is preparing for itself a future filled with forebodings of evil.

The ruin of the lands of Carthage, Spain, etc. eventually hastened the ruin of Italy.  It put an end to the legitimate supplies of grain which those countries had been accustomed to contribute; it forced their populations to crowd into already overcrowded Italy, and increase the requirements of food in a country which had been exploited like their own, and, though not so rapidly, yet by similar means;[1] and it gave rise to the servile wars, to the most corrupt period in Roman history, to the Empire, and to the endless series of consequences in its train.

[Footnote 1:  Although the various states of Italy were conquered by Rome before Greece was, it is probable that emphyteusis was not employed in those states until after the year B.C. 146—­between that and B.C. 120.]