Royalist Leanings of the Peasant Classes In closing a debate in the Chamber of Deputies concerning the treatment of Portugal since the war the Minister for Foreign Affairs declared that Great Britain had nobly and loyally performed her part, and that if Portuguese claims had not been more successful this was due to lamentable internal discords, Many Republicans are persuaded that the comparative failure of the Republic since 1910 is due to Royalist conspiracies, to Spanish enmity, to foreign journalists who related what they saw, to one external cause after another rather than to disunion, narrowness, and incompetence, the Lisbon correspondent of t Morning Post.''
The Foreign Minister's speech was a plea for union. The Republic has hitherto mistaken unity for union. It is not by keeping the power in the hands of a single party, and looking upon those outside that party as false Republicans, that the Republic can ever, become nationalized.
Of vital importance to the Republic would be the formation, not in name only (that has been done more than once already), of a Republican Conservative Party, able to alternate in power with the Democrat Party. Ihe hopes of the Portuguese Royalists lie some 20 years ahead. The peasants—four-fifths of the population-~ with their recent acquisition of wealth, will inevitably play a weightier part in the destinies of the nation. At present they are mostly Royalist.
So long as the Republic fails to form a genuine Conservative Party, to adopt a more conciliatory attitude (of which the first sign would be a general amnesty), and to 1t-tract the peasants by throwing anti-Clericalism overboard, the hopes of the Royalists will steadily grow. The time has certainly come when a broad-minded, generous policy on the part of the Republic will be fotind to pay, both immediately and as regards the future. too dreadful for utterance.
It was impossible for the jury-men to draw any other conclusion than that you wished them to find a verdict of guilty?
But whatever liberties the judges of that day may have taken it is generally agreed by those with long experience of criminal courts that it is extremely rare for a judge to betray by the least facial express sion his personal opinion of the prisoner's guilt or innocence.
"Apart, perhaps, from a slight inflexion of the voice to emphasize points in evidence of particular importance, I have never observed a judge influence the jury by means of mannerisms," said a lawyer. "Study any of our judges while they are on the bench, and you will find their faces models of sphinxlike impassivity."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.