, or illegal advances made
to the King, beyond the sums voted in the civil list. It is only fair
to remember that the king of a poor country is nowadays in a very
uncomfortable position, more especially if the poor country has once
been immensely rich. The expenses of royalty, like those of all other
professions, have enormously increased of late years; and a petty king
who is to rub shoulders with emperors is very much in the position of a
man with £2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the
resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even
fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than
with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his
millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the
wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to
reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount."
But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. Easy-going and
self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing in forma pauperis among
the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of
his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had
not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their
times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a
day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other
members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and
there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would
suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to
pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a
matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the
treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had
expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The
total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in
millions of pounds.
These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and
administration, rendered even the
cacique-chosen Cortes unruly, and
our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a
"thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary gâchis. He
found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not
as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of
personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great
private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's
notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies
diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a
degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious,
arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really
strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political
insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no
plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it
may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the
work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the
only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a
dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an
anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of
Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on
the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making
off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your
Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,'
replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will
desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in
fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the
field of battle.
