CROWN PRINCE BANISHED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 25 November 1907, Page 2

CROWN PRINCE BANISHED.

Till': PORTL'GUI'ISK DICTATORSHIP. COUNTRY SEKTIIINC WITH DISCONTENT. Received Xov. 24, 4.40 p.m, London, November 2!i. The Daily Express' .Madrid correspondent asserts that King Carlos banished the Crown Prince of Portugal for remonstrating with him on the. inadvisability of continuing a practical dictatorship, which in turning Portugal into a hotbed of republicans and anarchists and endangering the dynasty. The Prince is under the influence of the parly desiring King Carlos to abdicate in bin son'ri favor.

Kenlior Franco, the Portuguese Prime Minister, is committed to a revolution of very alarming quality (says the latest number of "Life"), lie lias announced that no Parliament will be summoned until politician* exist who are lit to sit in it. The cynic will suggest that on I Ilia condition the next Portuguese Parliament will sit only when the millennium arrives. There is, as a matter of fact, nothing more curious in the whole political landscape at the present moment than the state of Portugal. It sits—not sighing, but on the whole rejoicing—beneath a despotism as absolute—tried by all the tests proper to despotism—as anything Russia ever knew. Almost every kind of freedomfreedom of speech, of the press, of the popular will—has emigrated. The King reigns through a Prime Minister, who is a dictator; and, to complete the paradox, who is an ardent Liberal. He is a

constitutionalist who has undertaken -to save the constitution by suspending it. The key to the paradox lies in the circumstance that the dictatorship of Senhor Franco is designed, not to suppress Parliament, but to cleanse it. Parliament had become a centre of corruption, and ran the peril of being killed by popular scorn. The disgust with its dishonesty threatened a revolution. Only last year, for example, there was a partial mutiny of the fleet, riots at I Lisbon, whispers of revolt in the army. The leaders of the Government and the

Opposition, in. turn, applied to the King for a dictatorship. He refused both, and chose as Prime Minister Scnhor Franco, a politician who is very young, hut who is of high character, and had signaled himself by attacking the expenditure lwth of the Court and the Parliament. A corrupt Parliament quickly quarrelled with a too inflexibly upright Prime Minister, and in May last Parliament was dissolved, and Portugal has since contrived to exist without one. The Portuguese Prime Minister is a dictator who governs by decree and raises taxes by mandate. The whole situation suggests many questions: how long will it last; by what test will Scnhor Franco determine when Portugal contains enough honest politicians to equip a Parliament?