Legislation

In the short article entitled ‘Legislation’ in the first edition of this work, we stated that we would give in the ‘Supplement’ a brief account of the legislative enactments promulgated concerning this archipelago, as a valuable aid to the study of the measures adopted by the governments of mainland Portugal in the public administration of Madeira over the long period of five centuries. The ‘Supplement’, which was to have formed the third volume of the Elucidário Madeirense, was never published, and in this new edition the gap cannot be filled, because a summary of that legislation would take up far too much space. The deficiency has been partly remedied by the publication of the book O Arquipélago da Madeira na Legislação Portuguesa, by Father Fernando Augusto da Silva. It contains a summary of these legislative enactments for the period from 1934 to 1939, accompanied by a detailed, annotated index, and occupies more than a hundred pages of the book. Should a second edition of that work be produced, it ought to add a summary of the legislation promulgated before the constitutional period. For this the learned notes to ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) offer us an abundant repertory, as do several old collections of Portuguese legislation, and in particular the works of José Anastacio de Figueiredo and José Justino de Andrade e Silva.