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Updated: June 19, 2025
Near this latter point stand the strong, massive ruins of an iron foundry, erected in the times and by the order of the famous Marquis of Pombal. The whole of the buildings were constructed of stone, cemented with oil and lime. The dam for water-power was made of the same materials, and 27 feet high.
Besides building Mafra he gave great sums of money to the Pope, and obtained in return the division of Lisbon into two bishoprics, and the title of Patriarch for the archbishop of Lisboa Oriental, or Eastern Lisbon. When he died he was succeeded by Dom José, whose reign is noted for the terrible earthquake of 1755, and for the administration of the great Marques de Pombal.
They have lost, as the census shows, something of their extreme ignorance, and have abated their worst superstitions since the expulsion of the Jesuits by Pombal , and the reforms of 1820, 1828, and 1835. In the latter year Dom Pedro suppressed monkeries and nunneries by disallowing masses, and by pensioning the holy tenantry with 9 dols. per mensem, afterwards, reduced to 5 dols.
Pombal, whose heart was bad, though he made a good minister, reduced the church during his administration. He suffered no persons to enter the convents, and, as the old monks and nuns died, threw two convents into one, and sold the other estates.
Above them is a broad frieze divided into squares by a round moulding; there are two rows of these squares, and in each is an opening with a triangular head like a pigeon-hole, which has given rise to the belief that it was added by the Marquez de Pombal after the great earthquake. Pombal means 'dovecot, and so it is supposed that the marquis added a pigeon-house wherever he could.
The pillory is still to be seen in them, and the gaol too; this last a sort of wild beast cage, with a huge grated window level with the public square, through which every one can talk, without any surveillance, with the prisoners, condemned or otherwise, who are all huddled together pell mell. There were only two young women in the gaol at Pombal. We entered into conversation with them.
"You stand out for the last minute?" "A promise is a promise." "Very good. Be it so. We have a little justice to do among ourselves, for one of my fellows has been misbehaving. We have a strict rule of our own which is no respecter of persons, as de Pombal here could tell you. Do you truss him and lay him on the faggots, de Pombal, and I will return to see him die."
I passed my eye instead smiling, BIEN ENTENDU round the ring of waiting faces, saw that there was no one except De Pombal I had cause to fear; and then at last I rose and looked at the fool with the grim face I have known impose on older and wiser men. 'Marked cards, M. l'Anglais? I said, with a chilling sneer. 'They are used, I am told, to trap players not unbirched schoolboys.
For myself I remained upon the floor, with my mind in a turmoil of hope and wonder. Five minutes later de Pombal and his men were back. "You are laid upon the beacon," said he; "I defy anyone in the world to say it is not you, and you are so gagged and bound that no one can expect you to speak or move.
In a free country they could do no harm; they would be always obliged to modify and transform themselves and would never gain a real empire either in the world of politics or intellect The great Pombal, who may be called the Cavour of Portugal, took his conception of a free state from England, like the Italian statesman, but he did not understand that persecution is an unfortunate way of inaugurating liberty.
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