Excerpt from Portugal of the Portuguese Since the murder of King Carlos and of the Crown Prince Luis Felipe on the lst of February, 1908, Portugal has been in the limelight. A swarm of writers have descended like locusts on the land, and the printing-presses of Europe have groaned beneath the mass of matter concerning this unfortunate country. Yet most often the matter has been necessarily superficial, and a few outstanding features, a murder, a revolution, the methods of a secret society, have laid hold on public attention. The Portuguese is, therefore, apt to be regarded less as a poetical dreamer, heir of the glories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, than as a political schemer, with a pistol in one pocket and a bomb in another. And since in the matter of political disturbances the end is not yet, and a strident minority is likely for some years to come to impose itself in Portugal and attempt to impose itself on public opinion abroad, crying out that all criticism of it springs from hatred of Portugal, it is of importance to distinguish between this minority of misguided, unscrupulous and half educated persons, and the true people of Portugal. We do not usually mistake a little yellow froth on the surface for the sea, and only the ignorant will saddle the Portuguese people With the words and deeds of a political party with which it has no connection Whatever, not even that of the vote. Great Britain has everything to gain from a better under standing oi a people with which she has so many dealings, and which is in itself so extraordinarily interesting and. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.