r the demagogue and
the cacique has been correspondingly tempting. Parties have been
regularly mere cliques and party politics only factional strife.
Throughout the period corruption was abundant and such public feeling
as existed was stifled systematically. Elections were supervised in
every detail by the provincial governors; agents of the Government
were employed to instruct the people in their choice of
representatives; and the voters did habitually precisely what they
were told to do. No one ever expected an election to show results
adverse to the Government. Especially unscrupulous was the manner in
which the preponderating parties obstructed systematically the
election of Republican and Independent deputies. As late as 1906 but
one Republican was returned to the Cortes, although it was a matter of
common knowledge that in many constituencies the party commanded a
clear majority.

[Footnote 873: By official calculation, 78.6 per
cent in 1900.]

*699. The Dictatorship of Franco, 1906-1908.*--From June, 1900, to
October, 1904, the Regeneradores were in power, with Ribeiro as
premier. During this period two national elections, in 1900 and in
1904, yielded the controlling party substantial majorities. From
October, 1904, the Progressive ministry of Luciano de Castro occupied
the field, but in the spring of 1906 there took place a series of
ministerial crises in the course of which Ribeiro returned for a (p. 633)
brief interval to power. The election of April 26, 1906, gave the
Regeneradores 113 seats, the Progressistas 30, and the Republicans 1.
The ministerial changes by which this election was accompanied
prepared the way for the establishment of the regime known in recent
Portuguese history as the _dictadura_, or dictatorship. The new
premier, Joao Franco, was one of the abler and more conscientious men
in public life. Originally a Regenerator, as early as 1901 he had led
a secession from the party, and in 1903 he had organized definitely a
third party, the Liberal Regenerators, whose avowed end was the
establishment in Portugal of true parliamentarism. In 1906 a "Liberal
Concentration" was effected between Franco's followers and the
Progressistas, led by Castro, and the outcome was the calling, May 19,
1906, of Franco to the premiership. That office he assumed with the
determination to introduce and to carry through an elaborate programme
of sorely needed fiscal and admin