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.
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