Porto Santo (development, decline and crises)

Fifths and eighths

In the early days of colonisation the settlement of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), later a town (vila), grew and prospered. Yet little more than a century later it began a clear decline, which has persisted through the ages and is from time to time aggravated by fearful crises, due above all to the prolonged droughts that occur there with relative frequency.

This first prosperity was neither long-lived nor especially noteworthy. Its almost immediate ruin, particularly from the end of the 16th century, was brought about not only by the serious cause already mentioned but also by the frequent attacks of pirates, the absence of the donataries, the ancestral pretensions of many of the inhabitants, who abandoned the cultivation of the land, the climatic conditions that then led to enforced idleness, and still other circumstances of a local nature that are not well known today.

Dr Álvaro de Azevedo tells us that ‘the obscure history of that island amounts simply to the neglect to which governments always consigned it. Only in the time of the Marquis of Pombal, whose representative in this archipelago was the energetic governor and captain-general João António de Sá Pereira, did mainland Portugal discover that the island was a Portuguese possession.

Porto Santo had fallen into such a state of decline that it was in danger of becoming depopulated. Various causes contributed to this, the chief ones being the colonia contract (Madeiran sharecropping tenancy; produce divided, improvements owned by the tenant), made worse by frequent droughts, and the foolish pride of many of its inhabitants, who disdained to devote themselves to farming or to the crafts and trades. The wealthier landowners led idle lives in Funchal or in Lisbon and received the half-share (demidia) of the produce of their properties, leaving the tenants in the most deplorable situation, very close to destitution. A luxury in the most flagrant contradiction with the sad circumstances of the island was rife among its inhabitants, a great many of whom believed themselves descended from illustrious ancestors.

The royal decree (alvará régio) of 13 October 1770 put an end to many of these abuses, although it did not cut the evil out at the root. Even so, only the iron hand of the Marquis and of his representative on this island – whom the annotator of the Saudades calls ‘the Madeiran Pombal’ – could have enforced a decree with such draconian provisions, one that would certainly have provoked vigorous protests from those whom it harmed so profoundly.

The first paragraph of this truly Pombaline enactment, and the most violent of them all, establishes that the ‘lands must be vested in their present cultivators and their families, so that they come to possess the useful domain of those same lands. . . this remaining perpetual in the same families, with the obligation of paying for the best lands the fifths of their produce and for those of second quality the eighths, without these payments being subject to alteration . . . ’. Under this provision of the decree, the landlords not only could not alienate their lands but received from them merely a simple quit-rent (foro); moreover, instead of half the produce of the properties, they now received a fifth or an eighth, according to the quality of the land. Hence this royal decree came to be called the Law of Fifths and Eighths (lei dos Quintos e Oitavos), the law of ‘fifths and eighths’, which benefited the inhabitants of Porto Santo but stripped the proprietors of their centuries-old rights, unless they chose to live on the island and personally manage the farming of their lands. Under this first paragraph, the inhabitants were also exempted for ten years from paying the tithes that belonged to the State.

The second paragraph lays down that the posts of judges, councillors (vereadores), procurators of the municipality (concelho) and other offices of justice or of the treasury, which had been held by persons of rank, could be held only by individuals who ‘farmed the land’.

The third paragraph orders the governor to have chosen, ‘from among the sons of the said idlers who do not farm the land’, six to learn the trade of shoemaker, as many again to become tailors, two potters, four carpenters, four stonemasons and two blacksmiths.

The celebrated enactment contains other interesting provisions, which we omit for the sake of brevity; it is transcribed in ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra), on p. 713 and following. This is the celebrated legislative enactment that became known as the ‘Law of Fifths and Eighths’, which caused the greatest sensation at the time and was the subject of the most controversial comment, even though it was promulgated under the authoritarian government of the Marquis of Pombal.

The royal decree (alvará) of 13 October 1770 ordered the governor and captain-general, accompanied by other officials, to go in person to Porto Santo to carry it fully into effect. João Antonio de Sá Pereira accordingly took with him the corregedor (royal district magistrate) Dr Francisco Moreira de Matos, the superintendent of the royal treasury (provedor da fazenda) Domingos Afonso Barroso, the engineer Lieutenant Francisco Salustiano da Costa e Sá and the government secretary José Anastacio da Costa. He reached the island on 28 May 1771 and remained there with the other state officials until 20 June following.

While the corregedor of the judicial district (comarca), the superintendent of the Royal Treasury (Fazenda Real) and the assistant engineer undertook the registration of holdings (encabeçamento), distinguishing the lands that were to pay ‘fifths’ or ‘eighths’ of their produce, the governor and his secretary set about implementing the other provisions of the decree. He left behind a set of regulations chiefly concerned with agriculture, appointing as its inspector Captain Pedro Teles de Meneses, a native and resident of Porto Santo, with an annual salary of four hundred thousand réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis).

Sá Pereira assembled the Municipal Council, the authorities, the public officials and many of the common people, and there the decree of 13 October was solemnly proclaimed and its execution and observance declared to have begun.

Twenty years later the governor and captain-general Dom Diogo Pereira de Forjaz Coutinho visited the island to examine how the celebrated decree of 1770 was being carried out; with the passing years its principal provisions had fallen into disuse.

The crises that arise from time to time on the island, brought on especially by long droughts, as stated above, are a terrifying prospect for its inhabitants, who live forever under the spectre of famine with all the horrors that accompany it.