TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 97 







































_ articléof export, is grown in sufficient quantity to supply, in the form of molasses, the 
wants of the labouring population. The arrow-root is of first-rate excellence. The 
usual fruits of countries bordering on the tropics—the banana, custard-apple, guava, 
_ oranges, &c.—are found in great abundance, but rarely cultivated with much care or 
skill. Wheat, beans and barley, form, besides the vine, the principal articles of cul- 
tivation, but the produce is quite insufficient for the wants of the population. Maize 
is beginning to be grown in small quantities in some parts of the island. A species of 
yam, which is very productive, is cultivated on lands capable of irrigation on the banks 
of the torrents. The potato, which formed the principal food of the people and which 
was produced abundantly in the mountains as well as lower lands, has been attacked 
with the prevalent disease, and its loss has produced the usual disastrous effects which 
have been observed in other countries amongst those who depended upon it for their 
support. Sweet potatoes, cabbage and other garden vegetables, are produced in abun- 
dance, but nowhere of first-rate excellence—no attempt, in fact, is made to procure 
_ improved seeds or new species of plants or trees. The fruit-trees are such as are na- 
_ turally produced, and are never grafted. The cultivators follow rigorously the prac- 
tices of their forefathers, and resist with characteristic obstinacy all attempts at inno- 
vation. They are too poor or depressed, or too imperfectly educated, to look out either 
_ for new methods of cultivation or new articles of produce. 
_. The peculiar tenure of land in Madeira (which prevails more or less in Portugal, 
Spain and Italy, a relic of the dominion of the Romans, and’ which once prevailed, 
though under a modified form, in France) is intimately connected with the condition 
both of the cultivation and uf the people. During my stay in Madeira, in the course 
of the last winter, I paid particular attention to the conditions of this tenure, and to 
the consequences which it appeared to produce. It is a subject about which it is diffi- 
_ cult to procure very accurate or precise information. There are no Portuguese books 
- (oratall events none which I could procure) which describe it. There are no pub- 
lished statistical det and none which are easily procurable. The codes also of the 
Portuguese law, though excellent in principle, and such as, if executed, would be very 
effective in their operation, are very imperfectly or very corruptly administered, so as 
to place in many important cases the theory and the practice in striking contrast with 
eachother. Under such circumstances I felt myself compelled to depend partly upon 
personal inquiries and observations, and partly upon a series of replies made by a most 
intelligent Portuguese gentleman to queries which I had prepared very carefully so as 
to include nearly all the points which could affect the relation of landlord and tenant, 
and the effects which they produced upon the cultivation of the land and the condition 
the people. 
_ By the ancient laws of Portugal, a proprietor could alienate by will to a stranger, 
y from his natural and compulsory heirs (children or grandchildren, father or mo- 
grandfather or grandmother), one-third part of his possessions ; and he who had 
such heirs could dispose of them at his pleasure. A custom afterwards arose, under 
he authority of the Church, of instituting vinculos, or perpetual entails, upon the 
al heirs, on condition of providing for the performance of certain masses and 
ributing certain alms for ever for the souls of the entailers and his progenitors. 
All that remained when these claims were satisfied became the property of the pos- 
sessor’ for life, and passed in succession to his heirs, male or female, one or both, ac- 
cording to the conditions of the vinculo, and upon their failure reverted to the Crown, 
_ Daring the continuance of the entail the estate could not be charged in any way 
_ whatever, nor let for any period extending beyond four years of the life in possession, 
_ or beyond eighteen years of the same event, with the especial consent of the heir in 
" succession, who claimed, in both cases, the rent with the inheritance: no provision 
d be made for other members of the family : it continued for ever a life posses- 
n, and a life possession only in the strictest sense of the term. 
The union of several vinculos constituted a morgado, and the same term is applied 
an =e Portuguese language both to the possession and possessor. + 
The effect of this system, whether due to the influence of the Church or to the 
passion, so natural to mankind, to transmit their name and influence, in connexion with 
their possessions, to their most distant pesterity, was the absorption of nearly the whole 
_ territory (which was not in the possession of the Crown, or of religious establishments) 
n the hands of the morgados. Their further institution, however, was forbidden by a 
1849. q 
* 
