Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/383

 CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 347

each under the charge of a presbitero, or incumbent. Most of the conventual establishments of Portugal were suppressed by decree of May 28, 1834, and their property confiscated for the benefit of the State. At that period there existed in the country 632 monasteries and 118 nunneries, with above 18,000 monks and nuns, and an annual income of nearly a million sterling. This revenue was applied to the redemption of the national debt ; while a library of 30,000 volumes was set up at the former convent of San Francisco, at Lisbon, from the collections of books and manuscripts at the various monasteries. A few religious establishments are still per- mitted to exist ; but their inmates are in a state of great poverty, and the buildings are gradually falling to ruin. The lower ranks of the priesthood are poorly educated, and their income scarcely removes them from the social sphere of the peasants and labouring classes. The number of Protestants' in Portugal, mostly foreigners, does not exceed 500. They have chapels and ministers at Lisbon and Oporto. .

The superintendence of public instruction is under the manage- ment of a superior council of education, at the head of which is the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and which holds its sitting at Coimbra. Public education is entirely free from the supervision and control of the Church. By a law enacted in 1844, it is compulsory on parents to send their children to a place of public instruction ; but this prescription is far from being enforced, and only a very small fraction of the children of the middle and lower classes really attend school. In 1854 there were 1,136 schools devoted to primary instruction, attended by 33,500 pupils of both sexes, of whom, however, only 1,570 were females. From the year 1854 to 1862 the Government founded 588 new schools, of which for boys 452, for girls 136. Portugal had in 1854, 1,200 public schools, with 55,12 scholars. At the close of 1861 there were 1,788 public schools, with 79,172 scholars, showing an increase of 23,980 scholars. In 1862, there was one scholar to every 36 inhabitants. There is only one university in the kingdom, that of Coimbra, founded in 1290. It has five faculties, and 46 professors and lecturers, who are attended by between 800 and 900 students. The lyceums, which impart secondary instruction, number 182, with, on the average, 3,000 scholars. The clergy are educated in six seminaries and eight training schools, where most of them receive gratuitous in- struction. In the building of the extinct monastery at Belem, about 900 orphan and abandoned children of both sexes are sup- ported, educated, and taught various useful trades.

Ths expenditure on public education by the government was rather less than 9,000 milreis, or 2,000/., in each of the years 1867-6S.