Apropos of the crisis in Portagal—which night be summed up as the incompatibilities of a debt-ridden Mo-natch, a spendthrift Government and a bankrupt Proletariste—the last number of Truth " contains some amusing. notes on the way the money goes. At least they are amusing some distance away (on the principia of the humour: afforded by " man slipping up ona banana skin); to the poor Portuguese they appear in a different light. To begin with, there is the expensiveness of all necessities which naturally accompanies excessive Protection—in the case of Portugal a Protection so ridiculously aggravated that " miller may not even grind foreign grain which has paid heavy duty unless he can show a sample of precisely the same kind grown in Portugal. So much for Proletariate. Now for Government; which thrives pon sinecure, supporting, as " Truth" expresses it, host of Court barnacles." For instance there is the post of woman searcher at the Customs house. There is a large number of these, all held by Court ladies. They do no searching, probably have never been near the Customs house except when travelling, and their pay is good, for Portugal. There are also foreig consuls who live rent free, draw salaries and write novels; certainly there was one such in Paris; he complained there, that but for Portuguese ladies' love of French finery, he would have nothing to doat his consulate, The debt-riding of the King is not so much due to his own tastes as to the ruinous exactions which beset him when he goes abroad. To put up at a first-class hotel with a big suite of gentlemen is expensive nothing to the expense of house. The tariff in " tips" to servant for is sealed at 1,000 fra. for a luncheon, of avythiug like the granl style—and proportionately more for a protracted stay. -King (arles is said to have winced and made a wry face when he heard that the whole of the Theatre Francais Company bad been asked to entertain him at one country house; it meant for. hi a heavy bill in rings, pins and jewelled "The Health and Vigour of an in dividual depend upon the quantity: quality of the blood. When the tissuot bare been at work, there are thrown into the blood waste products, and if these be not eliminated but (through any cause) detained in the blood, they influence nutrition and function and final-produce oigenic disease."—" The Humanitarian." In cases of Serofala, Scurry, Eczema, Bad Lege, Skin and blood Diseases, Pimples, and Sores of all kinds, the effects of Clarke's Blood Mixture are marvellous. Thousands of wonderful cures have been effected' by it, Clarke's Blood Mixture is sold everywhere at 2s. 9d. per bottle. Beware of Wortless imitations and substitutes snuff boxes. On the top of that there would be the usual present to " the poor of Paris." The upshot of all this was that Sr. Franco, the Portuguese Prime Minister, was obliged to increase vil List by 1,000,000 fre. a year, and incidentally the national crisis by considerably more than the value of that sum.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.