¦."¦¦..-..¦¦.. ¦ ¦ . • ':;:¦¦,
¦BSItllliff

fit

iiiiifilill

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

DJTI a

mrr^?

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

*

THE DAY MISSIONS LIBRARY

ENGLAND AND PORTUGAL IN THE EAST.

POETUGUESE CLAIM

BOMBAY.

LONDON:
EDWARD STANFORD, 55, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
1881.
[Price One Sliilling.]

Portuguese Claim for tlie Restitution of Bombay.
To
Sir WILFRID LAWSON, Babt., M.P. for Carlisle.
Sir, The fame of your benevolent disposition
and your hatred of injustice done by the strong to
the weak induces us to lay before you, on behalf of
the Portuguese inhabitants of Bombay, an appeal to
the generosity of the people of England to restore
that city to the Crown of Portugal ; and we trust
that you will bring our prayer to the notice of
the great English Minister, Mr. Gladstone, who is
the hope of suffering nations throughout the world.
We are, Sir,
With deep respect and admiration,
Your obedient servants,
Manoel d' Albuquerque,
John V. da Gama,
P. Soarez,
Pinto da Cunha,

Provisional Directors of the! Portuguese
Community of Bombay.

Bombay, Marcs 21, 1881.

APPEAL TO the
PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

The happy tidings that have reached us in these
latter days of the splendid moral courage dis
played by the Liberal Government of England in
restoring Afghanistan to the Afghans, and the
Transvaal to the Boers, have sent a thrill of joy
through our hearts, and re-awakened hopes which
had slumbered in the breasts of ourselves and our
fathers for two hundred years. Indeed, not we
only, but all the subject races of the vast British
Empire have beheld with astonishment and delight
the opening of a new era, the era of conciliation
and peace, for England's colonies and dependencies
in all parts of the world. Misled by the selfish
spirit of patriotism, Englishmen have for many
generations flattered themselves that the extension
of their empire, which meant for them the gratifi
cation of their lust for power and riches, carried
also in its train the spread of civilisation and the
enlargement of the happiness of mankind. But
the nations subdued by England during the last
three centuries, in which she has been possessed

( 6 )
by the colonising spirit and has given the rein to
her love of enterprise, have viewed the creation of
her unequalled empire with far different feelings.
In India, more particularly, not only do the
natives resent their subjugation, but all the sea-
coasts are strewn with the wrecks of European
nationalities destroyed by the English in their
fierce and victorious struggle to acquire the mono
poly of the trade of the East.
The sixteenth century was devoted by England
to a desperate conflict with Spain and Portugal,
then the chief maritime powers of the world, for
supremacy at sea in the New World and the
Indian Ocean. Having emerged successful from
that prolonged strife, England was engaged during
the seventeenth century in a similar warfare with
the Dutch ; and, when they in their turn had been
overcome, England next turned her attention to
the French, whom she deprived of their Eastern
commerce and possessions in the wars of the
eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
century. At the close of the contest with Na
poleon, England stood in what her statesmen then
regarded as the proud position of having van
quished all her European rivals, and appropriated
their trade, and for the most part their foreign
dominions also, for her own exclusive benefit.
She was the unquestioned mistress of the seas, and
her army had gained for her on land, both in
Europe and in Asia, great victories and imperish-

( 7 )
able renown. The Englishman of those days fully
realised the boastful description given of him by
a poet of the age of Chatham and Wolfe : —
" Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by."
By fraud and force he had built up for himself
an empire on which the sun never sets, and he
seemed to have nothing left to do but to enter into
the secure enjoyment of a material prosperity
which there was no one to dispute.
This pre-eminence lasted till the apostle of a new
faith arose to startle the conscience of the English
people. The creed of selfish patriotism had never,
indeed, won the allegiance of the wisest spirits
in the nation. The profound philosopher, David
Hume, denounced Chatham at the height of his
glory as a charlatan, just as the- successors of Hume
in our time have denounced the successor of
Chatham, Lord Beaconsfield ; and the second Pitt
was obliged to use violent measures to repress the
outspoken protests of the high-minded thinkers
who shuddered at the iniquity of the wars under
taken against the French Republic and the French
Empire. But it was reserved for Cobden, the
apostle of the gospel of free trade and universal
brotherhood, to kill the spirit of patriotism in the
English people so effectually that Palmerston was
the last of their statesmen who could with the
applause of the nation claim to be the Minister of

( 8 )
England alone, and not of other countries in
Europe or of the world at large, and that Lord
Beaconsfield, who essayed more recently to play the
part of Palmerston, fell from power amidst the
inextinguishable laughter of a multitude of electors
who derided love of their native land as "Jingoism."
Free Trade has struck at the root of the national
pride and the martial instincts of Englishmen by
making them feel that they are dependent for
their very existence from day to day on the sup
plies of food sent them from foreign countries. It
has ruined English agriculture, and, by thus taking
away from English manufacturers the home market
for their wares, has made them most keenly sensi
tive to the risks of offending any of their foreign
customers, who not only supply food to keep their
workmen in good humour, but are able to relieve
their ever-increasing anxiety as to how they can
dispose of the products of their industry at a profit.
Thus, the great lesson of mutual forbearance and
consideration for others has been taught to the
haughtiest and most exclusive race of men on this
earth. But this is not all. The teachings of the Cobden
school of politicians have reduced both your navy
and your army to a state of impotence. The
influence of this school led the English Govern
ment in 1856 to make the fatal concession that its
navy should no longer have the right to search
neutral vessels in time of war, and the supposed

( 9 )
compensation for the abandonment of this right,
the abolition of privateering, is quite worthless,
since America, England's only possible rival at
sea, refused to be a party to the bargain. It is,
therefore, certain that, on the outbreak of a mari
time war, the right hand of England would be
paralysed. The trade of the enemy would be
carried on freely in neutral ships, while the immense
trade of England would necessarily be transferred
to foreign flags to escape the depredations of
privateers. The invention,' again, of torpedoes
has practically rendered your navy useless for
blockading or bombarding seaport towns, while
there is no certainty that in the altered condition
of naval warfare your fleets would still be more
than a match at sea for those of other powers.
And, if your maritime supremacy is thus en
dangered, what shall be said of your army, at one
time the most magnificent fighting instrument that
the warlike genius of man had ever moulded into
shape ? For thirty years now its organisation has
been the plaything of civilian and radical re
formers who detest war, and look upon military
men as the curse of the country; and they have
naturally succeeded in bringing the army into a
state of inefficiency which makes it the laughing
stock of the world. Against three di fferent enemies,
Zulus, Afghans, and Boers, in three successive
years, the English army has shown a lack of that
strenuousness in enduring the shock of battle, for

( io )
which in all past ages it was famous ; and the last
defeat of your troops, the discreditable rout of the
force under Sir George Colley that had occupied
the Majuba Hill, shows that in your military
reforms you have now reached a point at which
you have an army composed of officers who cannot
lead, and men who will not follow. Thus the two
main pillars of your material strength, the army
and the navy, have ceased to be capable of sup
porting the burden of the Empire, and the hour
cannot be far distant when the Imperial fabric,
raised at the cost of so many crimes, will fall to
ruin. It seems,' indeed, to be the deeree of Pro
vidence that the two hugest impostures of modern
times, the Turkish and British Empires, which
have long been united in an unholy alliance
against the liberties and rights of nations, should
be involved at the same time in a common dis
solution. But, happily for England, a Minister is now in
power who knows how to take occasion by the
hand, and who, instead of perversely opposing an
irresistible fate, cheerfully accepts it and tries to
turn it to the best advantage. Mr. Gladstone
knows that the sun of England's material gran
deur has set, but he is resolved that he will raise
his country to a height of moral grandeur to
which no other great nation has aspired by volun
tarily carrying out the inevitable, and magnani
mously granting to the subject states and races of

( 11 )
the British Empire the independence which, in any
case, could not be much longer withheld from
them. He has made a promising beginning of
this policy in Afghanistan and South Africa, having
in his first year of office relievedt he Queen of
the responsibility of governing two provinces of
her empire, those of Candahar and the Transvaal,
while he has at the same time prepared the way
for the restoration of Ireland to the Irish. There
can be no doubt now that the great work of apply
ing the doctrines of Cobden to practical politics,
which was begun by Sir Robert Peel in 1846, is
destined to be completed by Sir Robert Peel's
iriost brilliant pupil and self-appointed avenger,
the present Prime Minister of England. Of
course, surviving patriots of the old school, who
do not understand what an anachronism the
British Empire has become, abuse this illustrious
Minister as a coward and a traitor. But the mass
of the English people are evidently his faithful
and devoted followers. As he himself has said,
rank and wealth may not be on his side, but the
country is not now governed by men of great
station and social influence. Its real rulers are
professors and literary adventurers, who would
have been sneered at as pedagogues by the robust
and greedy Englishmen of the Imperial era ; and
at their backs stand the democracy of culture, the
educated working men, of whom the noble Mr.
Bradlaugh justly claims to be the chief representa-

( 12 )
tive, and whose cosmopolitan Radicalism he has
felicitously embodied in the terse sentiment, that
it knows no country and no God. A nation so
changed from the old and evil English type will
place with pride in the St. Stephen's Hall of the
Houses of Parliament, near that statue of Chatham
in which the great War Minister is still seen
"watching with eagle eye and outstretched arm
over the honour and interests of England," statues
of those greater Ministers of peace, Lord Harting-
ton and Mr. Gladstone, the former placing the
crown of Afghanistan on the head of a dependent
of Russia, and uttering the memorable words,
" What right have we to be there ? " and Hhe
latter kneeling to Mr. Parnell for help to govern
Ireland, or turning his other cheek to be smitten
by the exulting Boers.
It is in these changed circumstances that we
appeal with confidence to the magnanimity of the
Minister and the people of England to give back
to us that Eastern city and seaport of which our
ancestors were unjustly deprived two centuries ago.
It is written in your annals that Bombay was
transferred from Portugal to England in 1661,
as the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, the wife
of Charles II. Considering how Charles II.
treated his wife, the Portuguese might fairly
say that the dowry ought to revert to them, as
the conditions on which it was assigned were
never complied with. But we will go further and

( 13 )
ask if it is not absurd, in this enlightened age, that
nations should be bound by engagements contracted
by their sovereigns two hundred years ago ? Mr.
Bradlaugh has already given notice that the
English people demand the abolition of the per
petual pensions granted by Charles II. to his sons
and their posterity. Why, then, should more
respect be paid to a treaty which conveyed to
England, without the consent of the inhabitants,
the town and island of Bombay, as the dowry
of Charles II.' s wife? It is notorious that the
Portuguese inhabitants of Western India opposed
the union by force of arms, and for some time
with success. Ultimately, the greater strength
of England prevailed ; English troops occupied
Bombay, and, on cruel and" scandalous pretences,
expelled our priests from the island, and confiscated
the buildings and estates of our churches, our
colleges, and of private individuals. They could
not, however, uproot us from the place. Our
people have increased till the Portuguese in
habitants of Bombay now outnumber the English
by three to one; we have accumulated wealth,
acquired intelligence, and hold fast to our faith; and
we look forward to the happy day on which the
Jesuit College at Parell, now occupied by the
English garrison of Bombay, will be restored to
its former use, and the dominion of Portugal over
the whole island restored.
Already we have seen with satisfaction the

( 14 )
failure of the insidious schemes of the late English
Government to coerce Portugal into surrendering
to England, by the Goa and Lorenco-Marquez
treaties, her most valuable remaining possessions
in South Africa and Western India ; and, now that
Dutch supremacy in Africa, from Cape Town to
Delagoa Bay, has been practically conceded by
Mr. Gladstone's Government, we may expect that
the claims of Portuguese and Dutch in Western
India, so long forgotten or treated with contempt
by Englishmen, will be soon acknowledged.
Amongst these claims none stands on such plain
grounds of equity as our claim for the restitution
of Bombay. Before the dissolution of the British
Empire, which has now set in, is fully con
summated, we are convinced that this act of
justice will be granted to our prayers ; and in
return we shall gratefully inscribe the name of the
Portuguese community of Bombay on the pedestal
of the monument which liberated nations will
erect in honour of the three great Englishmen — -
Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone — who have risen
superior to national prejudice and sacrificed the
material greatness of their country in obedience to
the sublime maxim that what is morally wrong
can never be politically right.

LOHDOK! riUHTED El EU1VAKD STANFORD, 55, CHAK1NG CKOBS,

3 9002

V,:-;..-,-.-;.vv .'.••.':-;¦. ;,.¦.¦/;¦.,¦'.>¦;¦-¦

. ' : 7 '¦':¦ '¦:''
77:7 S 7 777 .,:•¦.:'.

.' 7. ;7 77-77. 7 • '
:¦.¦¦:¦
'.¦¦.....¦.

v .