[Footnote 11:  During the thirteen years from 1840-52 the number of children deposited in the Oporto foundling was 15,608, of whom no less than 11,310, or 72.4 per cent.—­nearly three-fourths—­died while in the hospital.  Most of the remainder died during infancy after leaving 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!

There are persons with nervous organisms so abused that a sudden cry, whether it be of boisterousness or despair, will cause them great agony:  so there are others with moral susceptibilities so overstrained that the story of a nation’s misery and crime, such as I have endeavored to sketch, will evoke within them more pain than interest.  Regard for such exceptional persons has created a namby-pambyism in literature which would banish these topics—­the greatest and holiest in which human sympathy can be enlisted—­to the domains of science.  But science cannot aid unhappy Portugal.  Sympathy and prayer alone can mitigate our sufferings.  Therefore sympathize with and pray for us, you who stand in the broad glare of freedom, filled with plenty and surrounded by promise, Pray for unhappy Portugal!

AT THE OLD PLANTATION.

TWO PAPERS.—­I.