A PORTUGUESE OPINION OF ENGLAND.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2576, 23 June 1881, Page 3

A PORTUGUESE OPINION OF ENGLAND.

English diplomatists are not generally credited with excessive astuteness, and our success in treaties, arbitration, and general diplomacy of late has not been brilliant, to say the least. It is therefore, the “Daily Telegraph” thinks, “as little consoling to see ourselves as others see us, and to take the opinions of a public meeting in Lisbon as to the almost diabolical ingenuity which has lately characterised our dealings with Portugal. We have induced the Portuguese Cabinet to ‘ surrender Africa ’ to England through a treacherous treaty, and we have, in addition, despatched four ironclads to Lisbon to coerce the Parliament into voting its ratification. The people who attended the gathering were deeply affected at the recital of these British crimes. All the speakers in succession were embraced by the auditors, who fell on their necks and kissed them, and at touching passages were believed to have wept. One orator depicted ‘ England as a huge basket into which the nations of the world are emptied one by one.’ At an epoch when some of tho contents of the basket are being flung out, and no new possessions seem ready to jump in, tfie metaphor hardly comes home to us with force. Another orator brought in the Prince of Wales. Englishmen regard His Royal Highness as a personage who scrupulously holds aloof from the perplexing paths of current politics ; but the Portugese know better. Under cover of his devotion to patriotic feasts and public amusements he conceals a crafty diplomacy, and has managed to over-reach in this Lorenzo Marques business ‘ his cousin the King of Portugal,’ having first paid him a million of money as a bribe.”