HARROWING SCENES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1733, 25 April 1913, Page 5

HARROWING SCENES.

IN LISBON PRISONS.

DESCRIBED BY A DUCHESS.

REPUBLICAN DENIALS.

By .Telotfraph—Press Association— Copyright

(Reo. April 24, 8 p.m.)

London, April 21. An influential meeting, presided over by Earl lytton; protested against the treatment of political prisoners in Portugal. ' Tho Dowager Duchess of Bedford described harrowing scenes she witnessed during her recent visit to the Lisbon prisons.

Lisbon Republican papers deny the Dowager Duchess of Bedford's accusations. - MORE ROYALISTS SENTENCED, A WARNING. (Rec. April 25, 0.25 a.m.) Lisbon, April have been sentenced to two years' imprisonment each. Eight others wero acquitted. Premier, in the Chamber, accused the Royalists of using tho Duchess of Bedford as a puppet in a campaign which heralded a further attempt at the restoration of ex-liing Manoel.

He declared- that the next ■ invasion would be repressed mercilessly.

f TREATMENT OF ROYALIST PRIS- » • " ONERS. t ' "SHAMEFULLY AND CRUELLY TREATED." Mr. Aubrey F. G. Bell writes as fol a! 'I 'Spectator'' of March 8:— ,„f, aj ,oll t the same timo ai an import.ant letter on this subject appeared ill the Spectator (February 8, 1913) the PortuSUese Legation iu London issued a 'Note to the Lnglish press, stating that'certain prison relorms had been effected. - It ' "l ay -i S to point out that. BMeptior the tact that the convicts in- the Pemtenciaria '-criminals and Royalists ! > ,.i- e r I IiOW n° , 1 , 011 » el ' w ew' the hood, ' slmnl i i Jaws of civilisation should never have been inflicted upon political prisoners, the miserable situation ot the Royalist, prisoners remains unchanged. Moreover, those beneiiling by the reforms", do not include the. W- ■ averts ot Royalists who ate not confined ■'n. cells . but crowded with every kind of criminal in' the Limoeiro and other prisons. These prisons have not been shown to certain British journalists now in l'or--V • have,' indeed, . seen the ■ Pemtenciaria"—a carefully prepared visit atter which it wai stated in the official press that tneir impressions could not have been more favourable." Yet even were, this statement true,-.it would not alter tho fact .that political prisoners ought not to have been condemned to a Pnson s fij£ cm hitherto reserved for crim't? V t remainder of the arrested loyalists are kept for six months, a yean .two years, "without'a'.trial in prisons the condition of which the Republic only oxcuses_by throwing the responsibility upon the Monarchy, men last August a.British subject was arrested upon vague accusations (to which' the majority of the arrests are due), the case collapsed in ™ n .r.« a yso«nng to the intervention of the British Minister, Sir Arthur Hardinge. p tt 0 RCCllsel ' s were shown -to be men or utterly worthless character—one of them was actually in prison at. the t'imo for theft—and completely failed to substantiate their charges. Tho ease threw a vivid Jighe.on and jusuco ■of.the arrests. Another.lady, Dona Constanca Telles da' Gania, daughter of the ,'oui't of Cascaes, and a ; descendant of \ asco da Gama, was. arrested at about the-same time.: But she is a Portuguese'subject, and slie is still in the Aljube fortress waiting her trial. Were the: daughter, say, of the Duke of Wellington to be arrested, not on any direct charge of an attempt to dethrone the liing, but on the vaguo suspicion that she was by conviction a Republican, were she conhned in- a common prison and kept there-tor- seven months without a trial, people in Lngland would have some idea of what is felt on this subject in Portugal. The authorities have accepted all accusations without demur, and this alone gives unscrupulous accusers a pleasing Mnse of power. -Hitherto, indeed, tho ■Republic can only have had a pernicious effect on the character of the people. It has sliown itself to be not only anti-cleri-cal, but opposed, to religion, and this is especially disastrous in a country where M at l ? inhabitants are devoutly Roman Catholic, living in small towns and villages in which the Chnrr.h is the only education and restraint. H 6 ¥ ,r h , ave the , sincerity to avow their political or religious convictions have been clapped into dungeons, while false accusers, if not actually rewarded have gone scot free. Most often they are Carbopanos in the' pay of the State. ■To persecute, calumniate, starve, or kill a Koyalist is regarded as a patriotic ac- ' tion and what wonder if this is,',the view of the Lisbon mob when the Republican press has found no. name too vile to apply to those of Royalist opinions and when the regicides aro publicly and officially praisfcd! The arrest of innocent persons because they were Royalists or religious, or aristocrats, the extraordinary sentences of tho court-martial, tho attacks by the moo on defenceless prisoners, the cold-blooded-murder of a naval lieutenant by - Ca-rbouarios" in.t'ho slTcots of Lisbon, tho, assaults on the offices of tho independent press,, tho gratuitous insults heaped upon religion-theso and many other outrages' have evoked no word of protest. . . . So unfair has been the treatment meted out by this minority of extremists to the Royalist prisoners that a' mere alleviation of their sufferinps will now hardly meet the. case; only by the immediate proclamation of a general amnesty-can the Republic liono to clear itself, of a reputation-for cruelty and injustice. . -

Commenting on the above letter, the ■editor of the "Spectator" states:—While publishing Mr. Bell's lettnr and endorsing his appeal to the Portuguese Government we desire ,to make it clear bevond all doiibt that we entertain no feeling of antagonism' towards the Portuguese'state beeauso it is a Republic. Our instincts and 'sympathies are finite as much with the Republicans as with the Monarchists We want to help the prisoners howiuse they are prisoners and shamefully and cruelly treated, and not in the least because they are Royalists. That the Republicans wer» badly treated under the old regime affords no sort of condonation of the existing, horrors.