Portugal.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 21 May 1891, Page 2

Portugal.

Tee affairs in Portugal appear critical. No country can get along without money, and a little State that seta itself against a powerful one, is not considered first-class security by the money lender. Portugal has been very bounceable about the division of Africa, and has been guilty of acts, which a less powerful nation than England, would have considered due cause for war. All the time this poor and disturbed little State was using big words and committing small irritating acts she had not a copper to purchase the materials for war. Directly she appealed for a loan she learnt the opinion of the world of her acts, and has caused a great financial crisis in her own Kingdom. The mighty intellect of the Premier of England has not allowed the bounce of these little Portuguese to put him out, and the latest cablegrams show how prepared he was to act at once, directly these people had learnt their true position. The proposals that now have been made are not so advantageous as those previously offered, and have secured for the English company the best and highest of the lands, and ingress and egress by the river Limpopo. Lord Salisbury further proposes to avoid contention at any future time Avith such warm and and noisy neighbours, on the neighbouring continent of India, and during the tightness of the money market in Portugal, kindly proposes to find them money by purchasing the port of Goa, which lies some 250 miles south of Bombay, and the land attached thereto, being Goa, Daman and Diu. It is only a matter of some 1295 square miles, though the population is some 480,000. We shall most probably learn that such an opportunity to get rid of such a small settlement, impossible of extension, and the obtaininent of im mediate and much needed ready cash, has been accepted. And thus ludicrously will end all the tall talk that has been so long indulged in by the Portuguese.