The Portuguese possession of Brazil was to be far more dangerously disputed by the Dutch in the following century, and the only reason why they did not lose their American, as they did their Asiatic dominion is to be found in the method by which the colony had been settled. What was best in old Portugal, not necessarily what was bravest, but what was best and most industrious had gone to Brazil; the colonists there had been most wisely and prudently governed; they had been allowed to develop free from all restrictions by the wise policy of prudent governors; and the result of this free development was that the Brazilians remained Portuguese at heart. They repulsed the attempts of the Dutch, and even, when able to stand alone, they preferred to cling to the mother country. Therefore it was that when in the eighteenth century the Portuguese possessions in Asia were only a drain on the exchequer of the kingdom, Brazil became the main source of the wealth of the Portuguese Crown. Little did Cabral, or King Emmanuel, think that Brazil would be a far more valuable possession to Portugal than Cochin, or Goa, or Malacca, and that it was so was due to the manner in which it was settled; for colonies, whose prosperity rests on stout hearts and industrious hands, are of a lasting value to their mother country, while possessions, won and held by force of arms, are only of fictitious advantage and of transient value to the conquering race.
THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ--DOM SEBASTIAN AND THE CARDINAL HENRY.
The germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have been already noticed in discussing the reigns of Emmanuel and John III.; the country, exhausted by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and deprived of liberty of thought by the deadly influence of the Inquisition, was fast losing its old vitality; and what Portuguese were left in Portugal were either enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to the Court, or in the lower beggars upon the charity of the King and the Church. The Portuguese of the upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese spirit of daring were in Asia; the sturdiest peasantry of the lower classes had found their way to Madeira or Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves, subject to an absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that keen observers, like the Dutchman Cleynaerts, perceived that beneath its appearance of seeming prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the core. Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of the East; it was from the Tagus that the ships from the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins of Bengal, the brocades of Gujar[=a]t, the "calicos" of Calicut, the spices of the "Spice Islands," the pepper of the Malabar coast, and the teas and silks of China. Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world; the King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. But in spite of wealth and luxury and universal consideration Portugal was a decaying power, and a single shock was sufficient to strike the country from its place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation of heroes, and leave it defenceless against foreign foes.