98 REPORT—1849. 
law of Don José the First in 1770, under the bold but generally wise administration of 
the Marquis de Pombal, which declared the system to be contrary to the just rights of 
property, and to the just claims of the other memters of the family. A further anda 
more serious assault upon the system was made by the law of Don Pedro of the 4th of 
April 1832, which removed the entail from every separate vinewlo which produced a 
smaller revenue than 200 dollars a year, and from every morgado or union of vineulos of 
less than twice the amount. The effect of this law is already beginning to be felt in 
sales of land to English and other capitalists, and the range of its operation is rapidly 
extending in consequence of the great depreciation of land in Madeira, from the rapid 
reduction of the value of the wine, which is the staple product of the island. It 
would appear, however, from the most careful inquiries which I could make (though 
correct information on the subject is not easily obtainable), that nearly four-fifths of 
the cultivated lands are still under the operation of the vineulo. 
There is some land (but not of great extent) belonging to three convents of nuns, the 
only religious communities which survived the revolution of 1821: some is in possession 
of the Crown; there are also some customary freeholds held by peasants in the moun- 
tains ; but the greatest portion of the mountain pasture is in possession of the camaras 
or municipal bodies of the different parishes, and is commonable by all the occupiers of 
lands within their limits. So defective, however, is the execution of the law in every 
part of the island, that those districts are treated as common property, whether for 
pasturing cattle or collecting fuel, by cutting furze, broom, brushwood or timber, 
without any system or control. From this cause the noble forests of the interior, 
consisting of the til, the vignatico, the folhada (all species of laurels), and the tree 
heaths, many of them of gigantic size, are rapidly disappearing. They served an im- 
portant purpose in collecting the moisture and feeding the springs and torrents in 
those lofty regions, which are a principal source of the fertility of the cultivated re- 
gions below, to which they are conducted by an elaborate system of /evadas or water- 
courses, which have been in the cqurse of construction during many ages, and many 
of which are still in progress. 
The morgados formerly possessed country-houses, sometimes of great extent and 
magnificence, always with a chapel attached to them, where the masses required 
by the deed of their foundation were performed. They expected and received 
many acts of homage and of service from their tenantry, who regarded them as 
their masters or feudal lords. They brought offerings of their produce upon his 
marriage or the birth of his heir. They brought fowls to him at Christmas, and 
a portion of the head of every pig which they killed: if he removed from his — 
country to his town house, or in his other journeyings, they bore his hammock — 
(for there are no carriages in Madeira) and his baggage; during the war also, — 
when the island was in English occupation, and the resort of our Eastern convoys 
and ships of war, and when their wines bore an exorbitant price, they were gene- 
rally rich and prosperous, and profuse in their expenditure. The revolution of 1821 
swept away these and other feudal distinctions, and Icosened the bonds which con- 
nected the rich and the poor, whilst the rapid fall of the price of their wines reduced 
their incomes far below the scale of expenditure which ‘miust of them had adopted. — 
They began in consequence to anticipate their revenues, by selling the reversion of 
their crops for years to come to the English merchants. The consequences were — 
equally ruinous to themselves and to the progress of imprevement ; they became more 
and more severe in their exactions from their tenantry; their residence in their coun- 
try-houses became neither convenient nor safe, and they have since been very gene= 
rally abandoned. 
The caseiros or occupiers, the successors of the Roman coloni, held their lands” 
universally upon the metayer system, where the gross produce is divided equally 
between them and the landlord. They build their own cottages, the walls (of 
rough masses of basalt or tufa) which surround their occupations or support their 
soil: they plant their own vines, chestnut, orange, or other fruit-trees ; if water be 
brought to their lands from the /evadas it is at their own expense ; whatever, in fact, 
is necessary to bring their land into cultivation is done by them. These improve- 
ments, provided they are useful, or even when they are not so (for though there is a 
distinction between them in law there is none in practice), or emfeitorias, are the abso- 
lute property of the caseire, who cannot be removed from his occupation until his lands 
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