Talk of the Western Empire having "declined and fallen," as Messrs.
Gibbon and Wegg put it! Why, here it was again, and with the worst
of its ancient crimes inscribed upon its code of law. Emphyteusis was
reintroduced into Portugal by King Diniz (Dennis) in the year 1279,
and was followed by its usual effects--ruin and depopulation. In
1394 was born Prince Henry. He was the son of John I. and Philippa,
daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and was therefore the
nephew of Henry IV. of England. Perceiving and commiserating the
wretchedness of the people, and casting about him for a remedy,
Henry saw but one: that was departure from the land, emigration,
colonization, escape from the tyranny of the soil, of nobles and of
ecclesiastics--a tyranny which both his illustrious rank and his piety
forbade him to oppose. Hence his intense devotion to the discovery and
colonization of strange lands, which is in vain to be accounted for
on the ground of a mere passion, the only one usually advanced by
unthinking historians.
The results of this mania, as it was then considered, of Prince Henry
are well known--the discovery of Madeira, the Azores, Senegambia,
Angola, Benguela, etc.
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