POMBAL, Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho e Mello, Marquis de (1699-1782), the greatest statesman Portugal has produced in modern times, was the son of a fairly wealthy country gentleman, Emmanuel de Carvalho, and was born at Soure, near Pombal, on 13th May 1699. He was educated at the university of Coimbra, and was then for a short time in the army, but it was not until he was nearly forty and had been married some years that he received his first public appointment, and was sent as minister to London in 1739. There he studied English administration, but never learnt the English language, and was promoted to the embassy at Vienna by King John V. in 1745, and recalled in 1750 to become minister for foreign affairs. Before he reached Lisbon John was dead, and his successor King Joseph at once placed entire confidence in him. He soon began to show his strength: in 1751 he checked the Inquisition, by allowing no executions without the royal permission; he improved the navy, the police, and the finances, and freed the Indians of the Brazils from slavery. The great earthquake of Lisbon on 1st November 1755 showed him in his true greatness; when the king asked him despairingly what he should do, he answered briefly, “Bury the dead and feed the living,” and by his calmness at that frightful moment gained an ascendency over the royal mind which lasted till Joseph’s death. His power was at once used to check the Roman Catholic Church, which, with the J esuits and the Inquisition, had eaten the life out of the country, and in 1757 the Jesuits were expelled from court (see Jesuits, vol. xiii. p. 654). The Count d’Oeyras, as he was now made, then devoted himself to internal administration; he founded the Oporto Wine Company, encouraged sericulture, rebuilt Lisbon, and improved ...