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The influence of LMJ’s views also led to the further penal reform of 1884 and the promulgation of the Penal Code of 1886, which was remained in force until 1982, corrected, reformed and complemented many times. The 1850s, in fact, marked the start of a prolific output of historiographical studies which would also structure the principal trajectories of his historical thought and the conceptual maturity related to the those reflections. He participated in the Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger (1857), and also published in Paris an Étude Historique sur la Quotité Disponible en Portugal (1857), which was followed by the História da Real Casa de Santo António (1857), the Memória Histórica sobre os Bispados de Ceuta e de Tânger (1858), and the publication of sources, which he greatly valued, with the works Portugalliae inscriptions romans (1859) and Bullarium patronatus Portugalliae regum (1868–79).
Even in the last decade of his life he remained committed to historiographical production, working on a História Eclesiástica Ultramarina (1872) and História do Congo (which would be published posthumously, in 1877). Giving a clear priority to the areas of the history of Law and of the Church, with special emphasis on Europe and Africa, LMJ based himself on the notions of development, progress and the principle of harmony, notions that would characterize the evolution of humanity, based on the reciprocal dependency of human beings, which is a reflection of nature itself (where no living being can survive in isolation). From this there results the fundamental perspective of an innate relationship between Man and Society, with special emphasis on questions related to the social status of Man, intrinsic to his own existence and resulting from his very nature. According to LMJ, Man only fulfils his potential through association, seen as a way of regenerating the human race, since individuality is regarded as merely a transitional state between abstraction and inorganicity, on the one hand, and concrete liberty and organicity on the other. In these processes the author also values the role of Christianity as a motor of civilization. Counterposing the concepts of ignorance and barbarity to those of intelligence and reason, LMJ writes the history of man’s evolution within society by way of reform, regeneration and moral rehabilitation, very largely attributed chronologically to the eighteenth century, and based on the deepening of notions of justice and duty.
