The South American Republics Volume I Part 16

He describes the Brazilians as vain, but indolent and easily subdued; robust and supporting labour well, but inclined to an inaction from which only extreme poverty or the command of their superiors could rouse them. They had no education, for the only schools were a few Jesuit seminaries, and no printing-press existed. They were licentious, had no aristocracy, were unaccustomed to social subordination, and would obey no authority except the military.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOATS ON THE RIO GRANDE.

[From a steel print.]]

Underneath the surface fermented a deep disgust. Even in the seaports the very name of government was hated, and in the interior the people withdrew themselves as much as possible from contact or partic.i.p.ation with it. A dull hatred of Portugal and Portuguese spread among all cla.s.ses of natives. In much of the country the only law was the patriarchal influence of the heads of the landed families, who often exercised powers of life and death. Instances are on record where fathers ordered their sons to kill their own sisters when the latter had dishonoured the family name.

With the death of John V. in 1750 the great Marquis of Pombal became prime minister. The enormous energy and activity of this remarkable man revolutionised the administration of Portugal and Brazil. Official corruption was severely punished; order replaced confusion; agriculture, industry, and commerce were protected and encouraged. In spite of the threatened exhaustion of the placers mining flourished. Maranho and Para took a new start; the worst monopolies were abolished; the price of sugar rose with the great colonial wars and the adoption of reasonable regulations. Wealth and revenues increased apace and peace and security were self-guarded. When Pombal fell, after twenty-seven years in power, Brazil's population had risen to two millions; Rio was a city of fifty thousand and the capital had been transferred there; Bahia had forty thousand; Minas contained four hundred thousand people; the yield of gold was four hundred thousand carats yearly, and the diamond production one hundred and fifty thousand carats, and, finally, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande had been saved from the Spaniards and settled. Pombal had made short work of the Jesuits. In 1755 he took away their rights over their Indians, and four years later issued an order for their immediate and unconditional expulsion and the confiscation of their property.

Pombal had no favourites; he spared no individuals and no cla.s.ses in his work of ruthlessly concentrating all power in the Crown. But he built a Frankenstein of which he himself was the helpless victim the moment his old master died. Unwittingly he prepared the way for the triumph of the ideas of the French Revolution both in Portugal and Brazil, and his most beneficent measures were the most fatal to the permanence of his despotic system. Commercial prosperity gave the Brazilian people resources; the impartial administration of law gave them some conceptions of civic pride and independence; the encouragement of education, small as it was, helped start an intellectual movement which spread over the wilds of Brazil the liberal principle then fermenting in Europe.

Immediately upon his fall in 1777 the Portuguese government reverted to most of the old abuses, but the economic impulse did not at once die out.

Pombal had not only expelled the Jesuits, but had taken effective measures against enslaving the Indians. The latter separated themselves from the whites, and miscegenation largely decreased. On the other hand, the importation of negro slaves had been continued on a large scale throughout the eighteenth century and the proportion of blacks in the mining and sugar districts had increased. Intermixture with negroes was stimulated by the seclusion of the white women. The young men often took mistresses from among the slaves, and these unions sometimes subsisted after legitimate marriage. The system of double _menages_, however, decreased as manners became more liberal, and opportunities for social intercourse between the s.e.xes increased.

The more energetic Brazilians acquired the rudiments of learning in the Jesuit schools, and a few fortunate youths were sent to the University at Coimbra in Portugal. In the early decades of the eighteenth century societies for the discussion of literary and scientific questions were established in Rio and Bahia. In the centres of population little groups of scholars began to gather who surrept.i.tiously obtained the writings of French and English political philosophers. Suddenly, in the latter half of the century, a dazzling literary outburst occurred. Its seat was not in Rio, the political, nor Bahia, the ecclesiastical capital, nor yet in Pernambuco, the cradle of the nationality, but in Ouro Preto, the chief place of the mining province of Minas, twenty days' journey on muleback from the coast, and among a rude and unlettered population.

Within a few years appeared six of the foremost poets of the Portuguese language: the lyrics, Gonzaga, Claudio, Silva Alvarengo, and Alvarengo Peixoto, and the epics, Basilio da Gama and Santa Rita Duro. He who writes the songs of a people rather records their history than influences it. The writings of the Minas lyric poets are the best doc.u.ments extant on the character of the Brazilians of the colonial period. They clearly reveal that culture was only at its beginnings; that patriotism and national pride were indefinite and shadowy; that religion was neither dogmatic nor absorbing; that polite society had not come into being, and that the intellectual element entered little into the relations of the s.e.xes.

The independence of the United States suggested to a few Brazilians the possibility of freeing their country from Portugal. In 1785 a dozen Brazilian students at Coimbra formed a club for this purpose, and one of them wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, asking American aid. Jefferson was interested, but answered that nothing could be done until the Brazilians themselves had risen in arms. A like impulse was working in the minds of the poets and their friends at Ouro Preto. A child-like conspiracy was formed whose object was to found a republic with San John d'El Rei as capital and Ouro Preto as the seat of a university. A few practical men listened to the plans of the conspirators probably with a view of turning a disturbance to account in preventing the government from putting into effect an obnoxious gold tax then being threatened. Among those let into the inner circle was a young sergeant nicknamed "Tiradentes." He undertook the task of fomenting an uprising among the troops, but before anything practical had been done the whole thing had been given away to the authorities. The conspirators were arrested and taken to Rio, where the frightened governor inst.i.tuted a formal and elaborate trial and took a fearful vengeance upon the helpless boys and poets. Poor Tiradentes, being without powerful connections, was hanged and quartered. His memory is now revered in Brazil as that of the first martyr to independence and the precursor of the republic. The gentle Claudio hanged himself in prison after having been tortured into a confession implicating his friends. Gonzaga and Alvarengo, with several others, were banished to Africa.

Republican and separatist ideas had, however, made no headway among the Brazilian ma.s.ses. Brazil's independence was to come by the force of circ.u.mstances and not by any deliberate national effort, and for a republic she was destined to wait a century more.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PORTUGUESE COURT IN RIO

The political development of colonial Brazil may be divided into three epochs. First, there was the confusion of early colonisation, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a system of feudal captaincies, the struggles against the Indians, French, and Jesuits, and the search for a solid economic foundation for the new commonwealth. On the whole, this era contained the promise of the ultimate development of a freer governmental system than that of Portugal.

Next followed the Spanish dynasty and the wars against the Dutch.

Control of Brazil by the home government was weakened, and the colonists learned their own military power. The years following the expulsion of the Dutch--1655 to 1700--were the brightest politically in Brazil's colonial history. The munic.i.p.alities, governed by local oligarchies of landowners, exercised functions not contemplated by the Portuguese code.

Though the military governors were continually encroaching, and the system was imperfect, it was in essence thoroughly local. Its fundamental defect was the want of co-operation between the towns.

The third period began with the consolidation of Portugal's international position in the closing years of the seventeenth century.

Once secure from foreign attacks, she renewed the exploitation of Brazil with redoubled eagerness. The discovery of the mines made the plunder enormous. At first there were resistance and even formidable rebellions like Beckman's in Maranho, of the mascates in Pernambuco, or of the emboabas in Minas. But the civic vitality of the people was not great enough to sustain any continuous and effective opposition. Early in the eighteenth century the munic.i.p.alities were already at the mercy of the military governors, and Brazil was governed partly by petty despots and partly by numerous feeble local bodies who were without cohesion or power to resist interference. Brazil would have remained a dependency of Portugal during an indefinite period had it not been for a series of events which arose in Europe out of the French Revolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOM JOHN VI.

[From an old woodcut.]]

By 1807 England was the only power which still defied Napoleon. Portugal had been Great Britain's ally for a century, but Napoleon found it necessary to have command of Lisbon and Porto in order to enforce his Berlin and Milan decrees. He peremptorily commanded Portugal to give up her English alliance. The pusillanimous John, who had been prince regent since the insanity of his mother in 1792, hesitated and shuffled, seeking to put off the emperor with negotiations and evasions and a show of hostility to England. A single despatch indicating his double dealing was enough for Napoleon, who promptly made an agreement with Spain for the division of Portugal and ordered Junot to march on Lisbon.

The people were ready to make a desperate resistance, but their king was in two minds each day, and the army had been withdrawn from the frontier to bid the British fleet a hypocritical defiance. John shed tears over his unhappy country, but prepared to save his own person by a flight to Rio. Junot had pa.s.sed the frontier and was advancing on Lisbon by forced marches. The Prince Regent and his Court huddled their movable property on board the men-of-war lying in the Tagus. Fifteen thousand persons, including most of the n.o.bility, and fifty millions of property and treasure were embarked. Junot's advance guard arrived at the mouth of the river on the 27th of November, 1807, in time to see the fleet just outside and bearing south under British convoy.

Six weeks later the exiles caught sight of the coast of Brazil, destined thereafter to be the princ.i.p.al seat of the Portuguese race. The Prince Regent disembarked at Bahia, where the people received him with enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty and tried desperately hard to induce him to make their city his capital. He adhered to the original plan, and on the 7th of March, 1808, arrived at Rio, where he was received with equal cordiality. No conditions were imposed on the helpless fugitives. The first acts of the prince regent proved that the removal would be of inestimable advantage to Brazil. He promulgated a decree opening the five great ports to the commerce of all friendly nations. The system of seclusion and monopolies fell to the ground at a single blow. Other decrees removed the prohibitions on manufacturing and on trades. Foreigners were allowed to come to Brazil either for travel or residence, and were guaranteed personal and property rights; a national bank was established; commercial corporations were given franchises; a printing-press was set up; military and naval schools and a medical college were founded. Foreigners were encouraged to immigrate and that improvement in art, industries, civilisation, and manners began which can only result from the daily contact of different types of humanity. For the first time Brazil was opened to scientific investigation, and scholars, engineers, and artists were imported to aid in making its resources known. The commercial nations lost no time in trying to get a foothold in this virgin market; they sent their consuls and salesmen, and within a few months importations, princ.i.p.ally from Great Britain, far exceeded any possible demand.

The prince regent found his South American empire divided into eighteen provinces. These const.i.tute the present states of the Brazilian union--the only changes having been the separation of Alagoas from Pernambuco and of Parana from So Paulo, besides the erection of the city of Rio into a neutral district. Of the three millions of people one-third were negro slaves, and the free negroes and mulattos numbered as many more. The proportion of whites in the whole country was not more than a fourth, and in the larger coast cities, in the sugar districts, and the mining regions, it descended to a seventh and even a tenth.

Civilised Indians were most numerous in Para and Amazonas, and whites predominated most in the extreme South and in the stock-raising interior. In the century since, the whites have increased to forty per cent. and the negroes have fallen to less than twenty-five, in spite of the large slave importation in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Sugar was still the great staple. Exports of gold and precious stones had fallen with the exhaustion of the best placers late in the preceding century. Tobacco was largely produced, especially in Bahia, and Maranho and Para were centres of a flouris.h.i.+ng cotton trade. Rice, indigo, and pepper were exported on a considerable scale, and the production of coffee had been carried from Para to Rio, and was rapidly increasing.

The people of the interior were mostly clothed in coa.r.s.e cottons manufactured at home; probably nine-tenths went barefoot and lived in rude houses without ornamentation and conveniences. The slave system, the large landed estates, the want of diversification of industry, the general apathy, the ease of maintaining one's self in the mild climate--all these causes co-operated to lessen consuming power and to diminish Brazil's value as a market for imported merchandise.

Great estates, many of them owned by religious corporations, were the rule. Only the best parts of these estates were cultivated. Enclosures were almost unknown, and the farm buildings were dilapidated. Though next to sugar the chief wealth, cattle were neglected, breeds were not kept up, and the making of b.u.t.ter was so little understood that it was worth a dollar a pound. The proprietors of the sugar ranches left everything to their slaves. Ploughs were unknown; lumber was sawed by hand; water power was rarely used for any purpose, though so abundant.

The only schools were a few in the towns; artificial light was practically unused; the cities were dilapidated, and their filthy streets were full of stagnant water. Hors.e.m.e.n rode on the sidewalks in the centre of Rio itself.

Freight was brought from the interior on muleback over narrow trails, and hardly any roads for wheeled vehicles existed. The mountains and heavily forested coast regions were extremely difficult to penetrate, but in the spa.r.s.ely forested interior the old Indian trails furnished facilities for constant communication, which was astonis.h.i.+ngly rapid considering the circ.u.mstances.

The people were very hospitable; to receive a guest was an honour; each ranch had special quarters for travellers, and the only pay the stranger could offer was to tell the news. Outside the ports no foreigner had ever been seen, and the first Englishman who visited So Paulo in 1809 was as much of a curiosity as an Esquimau would be to-day.

During John's stay in Rio, Brazil was little involved in foreign difficulties. In 1808 an expedition was sent from Para, which took possession of Cayenne, but the place was restored to the French in 1815.

In the south the breaking out of the Argentine revolution in 1810 was a temptation for the Prince Regent to increase Brazil's territory. After the expulsion of the Spaniards by the populace of Buenos Aires, the Spanish forces in Montevideo held that place against the patriots for four years. John sent an army into Uruguay in 1811 nominally to help the Spaniards, but he had to withdraw it because of British pressure. After the surrender of Montevideo by the Spaniards a civil war broke out amongst the patriots of Uruguay and the adjacent Argentine provinces.

The warring factions trespa.s.sed on the territory of their Brazilian neighbours. John determined to seize the coveted north bank of the Plate for himself. In 1815 the celebrated guerrilla chief, Artigas, invaded the Seven Missions, which had been seized in 1801, and throughout that year and the next the Rio Grandenses fought desperately to expel him.

Finally Artigas was decisively defeated, and the Portuguese army marched down the coast and entered Montevideo without opposition. They were welcomed by the factions opposed to Artigas, but the Buenos Aires government protested and Artigas kept up a resistance in the interior until he was overthrown by rival Argentine chieftains. From 1817 to 1821 Uruguay remained in the military occupation of Brazilian troops, and in the latter year it was formally annexed under the t.i.tle of the Cisplatine Province.

Brazil had had to a.s.sume the burdens as well as reap the advantages of being an independent nation. The whole extravagant government with its swarm of hangers-on, who had bankrupted both nations together, was now saddled on Brazil alone. John's advisers regarded liberal principles as dangerous to civil order, and considered all French and North Americans as firebrands whose presence in Brazil might start the flame of revolution. The United States minister was treated as if he were a Jacobin agent, and American s.h.i.+ps were searched for Napoleon's spies.

However, the removal of the Court to Rio had set forces in motion which ultimately transformed Brazil. Free ports were open doors for ideas and education as well as merchandise. Free manufacturing and immigration diversified industry and spread energetic habits. The influx of so many educated Portuguese and the introduction of the printing-press stimulated a desire for instruction among the Brazilians. Ambition for employment in the public service, the road to which, under the Portuguese system, has always lain through the gates of a university, co-operated. A considerable educated cla.s.s began to be formed, though the intellectual movement never extended into the body of the people.

Through the former cla.s.s the nation found a means of expression. A spirit of inquiry and unrest was roused, but the movement was intellectual rather than instinctive; theoretical rather than practical; from the top down, and directed more toward revolutionising the central government than developing local administration.

The first outbreak on Brazilian soil against absolutism was the Pernambuco revolution of 1817. Five lodges of Free Masons existed in the city; the priests themselves were most earnest preachers of political freedom; merchants and sugar-planters wanted lower taxes; the prosperity of the sugar trade had made the people self-confident. A conspiracy was formed which had the sympathy of many of the clergy and influential citizens. An attempt to arrest the princ.i.p.al agitators resulted in a riot; the troops were mostly Brazilian, and rose in favour of their compatriots, and the populace joined them. The governor fled, leaving the public departments, and the treasury containing a million dollars in the hands of the revolutionists. The movement became at once frankly separatist and republican. A Committee of Public Safety was named; the Portuguese flags were torn down; a temporary const.i.tution proclaimed; a printing-press set up to publish a liberal newspaper. Messengers were despatched to the interior and to the neighbouring provinces to announce the overthrow of despotism and to invite co-operation, but they met with no enthusiastic reception. Fear of the aggressive Jacobinism of the city of Pernambuco cooled the slave-owners and conservatives, and the dignitaries on the revolutionary committee were shocked by the impetuosity of their radical colleagues. The insurgents had not had time to provide themselves with arms, and a Portuguese fleet from Bahia quickly blockaded the port. When the royal troops came up they found the interior of the province in civil war, and the radicals were soon backed into the city, where a short siege compelled them to capitulate. The more aggressive leaders were shot by court-martial and a military government was set up. Hundreds of prisoners were carried off to Bahia, where they remained until the great reaction of 1821.

CHAPTER XIV

INDEPENDENCE

In 1820 the standard of revolt was raised in Cadiz against the Spanish Bourbons, who, with the aid of the Holy Alliance, had re-established absolutism after the fall of Napoleon. The feeble Ferdinand was compelled to accept a liberal const.i.tution. When the news reached Lisbon the Regency, acting there for King John, was panic-stricken.

Communication with Spain was forbidden and word sent off post-haste to John to urge his immediate return to Portugal, or at least the sending of his eldest son, as the only means of pacifying the deep dissatisfaction felt because of the absence of the Court and government.

In Porto--always the centre of liberal movements--a formidable conspiracy was formed which included the leading citizens and the officers of the garrison, and in August, 1820, the royal authority was overthrown after scarcely a show of resistance, and a provisional junta installed. The movement spread over the northern provinces and thence to Lisbon, where a junta a.s.sumed power in December. After some confusion it was agreed temporarily to adopt the Spanish Const.i.tution, to summon the Cortes, and to retain the Braganza dynasty as const.i.tutional monarchs.

The news of the rising in Porto spread like wildfire through the Portuguese possessions beyond sea. Madeira and the Azores immediately installed revolutionary juntas, and some of the Brazilian provinces could not wait until the a.s.sembling of the Cortes before establis.h.i.+ng free governments. Among native Brazilians and immigrated Portuguese, among soldiers and citizens alike, the enthusiasm for a const.i.tution was well-nigh universal. In Para, Pernambuco, and Rio Grande do Sul, the royal governors were dispossessed by the united soldiers and people, and the Spanish Const.i.tution proclaimed as the law of the land. Rio, however, lay quiet, and it was not until February, 1821, that the Bahia garrison deposed the governor, and installed a provisional junta, which, protesting allegiance to the House of Braganza, proclaimed the Spanish Const.i.tution, nominated deputies to the Cortes, and promised to adopt whatever definite const.i.tution might be framed by that body.

The action of Bahia was decisive. Throughout the interior it met with approval. That John could hope for no support from Brazil in case he decided to make a struggle against the Portuguese revolutionists, was evident. Reluctantly he issued a proclamation announcing his intention to send Dom Pedro, his eldest son, to treat with the Cortes, and he promised to adopt such parts of the new const.i.tution as might be found expedient for Brazil. To such delay native Brazilians and the Portuguese-born were alike opposed. In Rio the troops and people arose, demanding an unconditional promise to ratify any const.i.tution the Cortes might adopt. On the 26th of February a great crowd a.s.sembled in the streets, and while the cowardly King skulked in his suburban palace, the Prince Pedro addressed the people, swearing in his father's name and his own to accept unreservedly the expected const.i.tution. The mult.i.tude insisted on marching out to the King's palace to show their enthusiastic grat.i.tude. Trembling with fear John was forced to get into his carriage, and the miserable man was frightened out of his wits when the crowd took the horses out to drag him with their own hands. He fainted away and, when he recovered his senses, sat snivelling, protesting between his sobs his willingness to agree to anything, and sure that he was going to suffer the fate of Louis XVI.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOM PEDRO I.

[From an old woodcut.]]

Thereafter Dom Pedro, though only twenty-two years old, was the princ.i.p.al figure in Brazil. He resembled his pa.s.sionate, unrestrained, and unscrupulous mother rather than his vacillating, pusillanimous father. He had grown up neglected and uncontrolled in the midst of his parents' quarrelling and the confusion of the removal to Brazil, receiving no education except that of a soldier, and hardly able to write his native tongue correctly. He was handsome, brave, wilful, arrogant, loved riding and driving, was eager and shameless in the pursuit of pleasure. His manners were frank and attractive and he was active-minded, quick to absorb new impressions, enterprising, strong-willed, loved popularity, and intensely enjoyed being the princ.i.p.al dramatic figure in any crisis. His personal courage was unquestionable, and he was prompt of decision in the face of dangers and difficulties. While capable of warm friends.h.i.+ps and with strong impulses of devotion and grat.i.tude, he lacked real faithfulness. Between him and his father little love and no sympathy existed. Prior to the events of 1821 he had not been admitted to the councils in state affairs, and his closest friends were among the young Portuguese officers, who, like most of their cla.s.s, sympathised with the const.i.tutional movement. Pedro was a Free Mason, and the Liberal opinions advocated in the lodges greatly influenced him. To Pedro, therefore,--young, ardent, popular, holding progressive notions,--both Brazilian and Portuguese Liberals naturally turned.

Seeing the role of leader and ruler of Brazil ready to his hand, Pedro favoured the departure of his father for Portugal. A meeting of the Rio electors, held on the 21st of April, to elect members to the Cortes suddenly changed into a tumult, and demanded that the King a.s.sent to the Spanish Const.i.tution before his departure. He had no choice but to yield, though probably neither he nor the popular leaders had ever read the doc.u.ment. The demonstrations continuing, Pedro became uneasy lest his father's journey should be delayed, and marched his troops into the square and cleared the people out at the point of the bayonet. This audacious move was followed by general stupefaction, and the King quietly escaped, leaving Pedro as regent. As his vessel weighed anchor he said to his son: "I fear Brazil before long will separate herself from Portugal; if so, rather than allow the crown to fall to some adventurer, place it on thy own head."

The grasping policy of the Portuguese members of the Cortes furnished the impulse that drove the Brazilians into union and independence. The Cortes met in Lisbon, and, although most of the Brazilian delegates had not arrived, immediately undertook to pa.s.s measures touching the most important interests of the younger kingdom. In December, 1821, news reached Brazil that decrees had been enacted requiring the prince to leave Brazil, abolis.h.i.+ng the appeal courts at Rio, creating governors who were to supersede the juntas and be independent of local control, and sending garrisons to the princ.i.p.al cities. Tremendous popular excitement followed. The coupling of the order for Pedro's retirement with the provisions for the enslavement and disintegration of Brazil, made the provinces realise that he was the only centre around which they could rally for effective resistance. A cry rose up from the whole country, praying Pedro not to abandon them. The address sent by the provincial junta of So Paulo was penned by the hand of Jose Bonifacio de Andrada, and may well be called the Brazilian declaration of independence.

"How dare these Portuguese deputies, without waiting for the Brazilian members, promulgate laws which affect the dearest interests of this realm? How dare they dismember Brazil into isolated parts possessing no common centre of strength and union?

How dare they deprive your Royal Highness of the Regency with which your august father, our Monarch, had invested you? How dare they deprive Brazil of the tribunals inst.i.tuted for the interpretation and modification of laws; for the general administration of ecclesiastical affairs, of finance, commerce, and so many inst.i.tutions of public utility? To whom are the unhappy people hereafter to address themselves for redress touching their business and judicial interests?"

Jose Bonifacio, whose voice and example, more than any other man's, gave expression and direction to the aspiration for independence, belonged to the English parliamentary school which was dominant then in liberal thought. The elevation of the young and progressive prince to an independent throne seemed an easy method of establis.h.i.+ng const.i.tutional government, as well as of securing Brazil's autonomy. Pedro did not hesitate long in acceding to the wish of the Brazilians. On January 9, 1822, he formally announced that he would remain in Brazil--thus defying the Portuguese Cortes. The word "independence" had not yet been employed, and there was a very general hope that the Portuguese would listen to reason when the Brazilian deputies arrived in Lisbon. The only active resistance to Pedro in Brazil came from the Portuguese soldiers, some of whom revolted and went so far as to march under arms to a point commanding the city of Rio, but their nerve failed them in face of the immense concourse of citizens who were preparing to fight.