nd violence Portugal, exploited and burdened with
serfdom and other features of bad government at home, was distanced
and overcome. Her colonies were captured and reduced by foreign
enemies, or invaded and ruined by one of the several political
diseases from which she had never wholly rid herself. For example, the
once magnificent city of Goa, which formerly contained a population of
150,000 Christians and 50,000 Mohammedans, is now an almost deserted
ruin, with but 40,000 inhabitants, _chiefly ecclesiastical_.

When Pombal assumed the reins of government in 1750 the population of
Portugal had been reduced to less than 2,000,000: there was neither
agriculture, manufactures, army nor navy. Perceiving this state of
affairs, and recognizing the cause of it, Pombal caused the vines to
be torn up by the roots and corn planted in their place. Ruffianism
was crushed, the Jesuits were banished, the nobility were taught
to respect the civil law, the peasantry were encouraged. After
twenty-seven years of reforms and prosperity Pombal was dismissed
from office and the old abuses were reinstated, among them those worst
incidents of emphyteusis which had been devised by the base ring of
nobles and ecclesiastics who held the land in their grasp.

These abuses remained without material change until 1832, and thus you
have a complete history of emphyteusis from the first to the last day
of its institution in Portugal. In truth, however, its last day has
not come even yet, for many of its incidents still linger in the code
of laws.

Now for its effects on the land. What growth of forest trees had
followed the abolition of emphyteusis under the Gothic and Saracenic
monarchs was destroyed under the government of Christian nobles, and
to-day there is scarcely a tree in Portugal--the woods, including
fruit and nut trees, covering less than 400,000 out of 22,000,000
acres, the entire area of the country. The destruction of the woods,
to say nothing of its effects upon the rainfall, caused the top soil
to be washed away, and thus impoverished the arable land, filling the
rivers with earth, rendering them innavigable, and converting them
from gently-flowing streams to devastating torrents, which annually
bestrew the valleys and plains with sand and stones.[2] In the next
place, emphyteusis has caused every kind of improvement to be avoided.
The soil has been exhausted by over-cropping; public works, like
roads, wells, irrigating canals, etc