The South American Republics Volume I Part 18

His bad management of affairs in Rio Grande was the immediate occasion of Feijo's resignation (September, 1837). The victorious conservative majority immediately stepped into power. Bernardo de Vasconcellos reaped at length a personal reward for his years of labour and intrigue, and became the ruling force in the Chamber, and Prime Minister, though a wealthy senator, Araujo Lima by name, had been elected regent. But Vasconcellos was merely the first among equals and held his power only so long as he could command the support of the conservative majority. A sort of oligarchy grew up which directed the work of reaction without much more regard for outside opinion than Pedro himself had shown.

However, Brazil had finally entered upon a stage of government which in form was parliamentary and in substance was partly so. It was rather the parliamentarism of Walpole than of Gladstone; the members owed their seats to the administration; they were a sort of self-nominating and self-renewing body; and departmental and judicial administration continued in much the same old way.

The great task before the conservative regency was to undo most of the work which had been wrought by the federalist and democratic movement of the early 30's. The amendments to the const.i.tution, known as the _Acto Addicional_, had apparently established the autonomy of the provinces in their local affairs. If these amendments had been put into effect, Brazil would have become a federated state like Switzerland or the United States. The conservatives were alarmed at the length to which the provincial a.s.semblies were already going in managing their own affairs, and succeeded in turning the country back on the road toward centralisation and unification. A law was pa.s.sed which interpreted the _Acto Addicional_ so as nearly to destroy provincial autonomy. The provincial a.s.semblies were forbidden to interfere with the magistracy; their resolutions could be vetoed by the governors or the national Congress; their power of controlling the administration of justice was taken away. They became little more than advisory bodies completely under the dominance of governors appointed from Rio, and who rarely were citizens of the states they ruled. At first there was little opposition, and the regency easily suppressed a separatist movement in Bahia which proposed to establish a republic until the boy emperor should come of age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DONNA JANUARIA.

[From a steel engraving.]]

The reorganised regency was, however, weak. The att.i.tude of the nation was merely tolerant and expectant. The war in Rio Grande, continued and the attacks of the Liberals in the Chamber increased in force and effectiveness. Ministers began to change and s.h.i.+ft; the conviction grew that the conservative oligarchy would not long rule the country.

Liberals and conservatives alike inclined to the idea that the best thing was to return to a ruler selected from the legitimate royal family. According to the const.i.tution the boy emperor would not become of age until he reached eighteen, in 1843. If the const.i.tution were strictly followed the country would have to be governed for years by a hybrid executive--a regent who was neither a ruler by popular choice nor yet a monarch by blood and succession. Many advocated declaring the Emperor's eldest sister, Januaria, regent, though the young lady protested tearfully against being turned into such a thing as she imagined a regent to be. More insisted that the Emperor, in spite of his tender years, immediately a.s.sume the functions of supreme ruler.

The politicians in opposition, with the two surviving Andradas at their head, took advantage of this feeling. Bills were introduced in Congress authorising the Emperor to take the reins at once. The regent's ministers did not dare directly oppose these measures; they only tried to compromise as long as possible. But difficulties and dissatisfaction increased; a formidable revolution broke out in Maranho; the Rio Grandenses invaded Santa Catharina. It was evident that the regency could not continue to hold the clas.h.i.+ng provinces together. While the intellectual conviction had never been stronger that union between the provinces was an advantage, circ.u.mstances were increasing dissatisfaction and insubordination in every part of the empire.

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

[From a steel engraving.]]

The contest in Congress over the Emperor's majority a.s.sumed an acute phase as soon as the session of 1840 began. The ministry in desperation sought to prevent immediate action by calling Vasconcellos back to power and proroguing the session. The announcement of this step was followed by an outburst that left no recourse but a submission of the matter in dispute to the boy emperor himself. The opposition deputies went out in a body to see him, and begged him to consent to a.s.sume his imperial functions at once. Though entirely unauthorised by the const.i.tution, no one made serious objection to such a revolutionary way of proceeding.

The young Pedro accepted with dignity and confidence; the city and country went wild with delight, and on the 23rd of July, 1840, Congress a.s.sembled in a sort of extraordinary const.i.tuent a.s.sembly and without a dissenting voice proclaimed him of age.

Although the ten years of the regency were the stormiest in Brazilian history, they were in many respects the most fruitful. The nation was serving an apprentices.h.i.+p in governing itself; its public men were being trained; the value of self-restraint and of peace were being learned.

The freedom of the press and of parliament was definitely established.

The production of literature began; professional schools were put on a footing not unworthy of any civilised country; learned societies were organised; the study of the resources of the country was continued; social intercourse developed; communication between the provinces increased; the study of foreign languages became general among the polite cla.s.ses.

Industrially, too, the period was one of germination of those seeds from which subsequently grew the prosperity of the country. Though foreign commerce increased little during the civil wars, the cultivation of coffee a.s.sumed large proportions, and while sugar and cotton, food crops and tobacco, suffered much from foreign compet.i.tion and civil disturbances, nevertheless they held up pretty well. The confusion of the times and the weakness of the central government prevented any great improvement in the public finances, but neither taxes nor debt were piled up as they had been under Pedro I. Though the efficiency and honesty of the administration left much to be desired, the small resources of which the central government disposed brought about an era of comparative economy in the departments.

CHAPTER XVII

PEDRO II.

The so-called Liberals went into power on the declaration of the Emperor's majority, and proved to be more tyrannical and centralising than the Conservatives whom they had replaced. Provincial governors were dismissed wholesale solely for factional advantage. The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved and a new one elected in the fall of 1840, and in the choice of deputies the Andradas interfered, securing an overwhelming Liberal majority.

In reality, however, the Andradas had not won the confidence of the ruling _coteries_, nor of the boy emperor. When they quarrelled with Aureliano, one of their colleagues, the matter was submitted to Pedro, who was then only fifteen and a half years old. His decision was against the Andradas. They resigned, and from that moment until his mental powers began to fail Pedro II. was the supreme authority in the State.

He governed parliamentarily as far as he deemed it possible, left most matters to his Cabinets, kept out of view, and was careful to ascertain public opinion. None the less he was the final arbiter in matters of the first importance. In the politics of the next fifty years he was incomparably the most potent Brazilian.

Happily for his country he resembled his mother rather than his father.

Studious and laborious, books were his great occupation. He was an indefatigable and omnivorous reader, and, though especially fond of history and sociology, few subjects and few literatures escaped him. No fact ever failed to interest him, but his mind was too discursive and his studies too widespread and too superficial to give him a store of sound and well-digested knowledge. Morally he was a complete contrast to his dissipated father. He was a monarch of the conscientious nineteenth-century type. He as a little boy had been obedient to the priests and ladies to whom his rearing had been entrusted, but they retained no great influence over him. Though thoroughly respectful toward religion he was not especially devout, and his political ideas were gathered rather from his own reading than from direct teaching. As a father and husband he was good and kind, and conscientiously devoted all his energies to the performance of his duties, public and private.

His first act on a.s.suming power was to forbid the people of his household to ask any favours of him in regard to public affairs.

His manners were democratic. Though tall and handsome he cared little for his personal appearance; his clothing was ill-fitting and ill cared for; he drove about in rickety old carriages with absurd-looking horses; he kept no Court properly so called; he would gobble through his state dinners in a hurry to get back to his books; he would call Cabinet meetings at inconvenient hours of the night if an idea struck him.

Though his subjects loved and trusted him, the general tendency was rather to laugh at his peculiarities. It could hardly be said that people personally stood much in awe of him. At the same time, when action was to be taken in a crisis, he could be as arbitrary as any czar. He took no pride in imposing his will over that of others, and his manners and methods were always mild and gentle. Some believe that he deliberately a.s.sumed careless, democratic ways, thinking them best adapted to maintaining himself in power, and it is certain that he showed little anxiety about his position and seemed to value it slightly. Intellectually restless though he was, his judgment was sound enough to enable him soon to foresee that the inevitable tendency was toward a republic, and in the latter part of his life he often said that he was the best republican in the empire, and that his main function was to prepare the way for it. At bottom he was not a man of strong pa.s.sions or intense will, but was rather a mild-mannered and philosophic opportunist whose greatest merit was that he loved peace, and whose greatest achievement was that Brazil remained internally quiet during his long reign.

With the fall of the Andradas the Conservative party returned to power, and a reactionary parliamentary government, with the Emperor as a sort of regulating and controlling _deus ex machina_, was definitely installed. Great things were hoped for from the new regime, and loyalty to the young Emperor was enthusiastic, sincere, and universal. However, the internal disturbances were too serious to be calmed in a day. The revolution in Maranho, which had been bequeathed by the Regency, was formidable. In pacifying it a general named Luiz Lima e Silva first came to the front, and was named Baron of Caxias for his services. This officer was less than forty years of age, and came of a family of soldiers, one of whom had been the military member of the first Regency.

He had served in all the wars and most of the insurrections since 1822, and had always shown solid though not especially brilliant qualities. He was a good manager of men, and a steady, pertinacious, and shrewd negotiator. His detractors accuse him of unscrupulous bribery, and it is certain that he was extraordinarily successful in sowing discord among his opponents. He obeyed the orders of his superiors and was faithful to the Emperor. Probably the limitations of his character were as important as his affirmative abilities in enabling him to grow into the great military consolidator of the distracted empire. His work in the first years of the forties was hardly inferior in importance to that of the Emperor himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARON OF CAXIAS.

[From an old woodcut.]]

The return to power of the Conservatives in 1841 caused great dissatisfaction among the displaced Liberals and the advocates of provincial autonomy. The Conservatives seemed to have captured the young emperor, and the Liberals began to insist on the application to Brazil of the English maxim, "The king reigns but does not govern." In 1842 a revolution broke out in Sorocaba, the home of Padre Feijo, in the state of So Paulo. The trouble was aggravated by the harsh measures taken by the Conservative governor to suppress it, and soon spread to various points in the province and thence to Minas Geraes. The revolutionists announced that their objects were to free the Emperor from the coercion of the Conservative oligarchy; to maintain the autonomy of the provinces; and to preserve the const.i.tution, whose guarantees were being rendered nugatory. Fighting only lasted two months, but there were fifteen important fights in Minas and five in So Paulo. The government forces under Caxias were completely victorious, and in the final and decisive battle of Santa Luzia he overwhelmed and dispersed three thousand men and captured all the princ.i.p.al leaders. The Emperor and Caxias adopted a magnanimous and conciliatory policy toward the defeated rebels, though the Conservative ministers persisted in advocating harsh measures.

Only Rio Grande do Sul remained under arms, and even there the rebels were not averse to accepting the Emperor's authority. As soon as Caxias had finished the pacification of Minas, he was ordered south. The campaign began by his winning two important victories, and he followed them up by promises of amnesty which detached some of the most formidable rebel chiefs. Finally, in the spring of 1845, Rio Grande returned to the Brazilian union on the concession of a full and complete amnesty. That province has ever since enjoyed a larger measure of autonomy than any other part of Brazil.

By the beginning of 1844 the disintegrating effects of a long continuance in power showed itself among the Conservatives. The Cabinet came to an issue with the Emperor over a question of an appointment, and he called the Liberals to power. The new government was ready to carry out the Emperor's policy of full and free amnesty and pacification by concession. With the collapse of the revolution in Rio Grande the central government seemed at length to have pa.s.sed all danger. The demands for a juster interpretation of the _Acto Addicional_ and for a larger measure of autonomy to the provinces and munic.i.p.alities died out altogether, or took a peaceful form. The Liberals in power turned out to be as conservative as the Conservatives themselves, and the work of consolidation and centralisation proceeded uninterruptedly.

The Liberal ministry, was, however, in a false situation. The very name they bore was an implied promise to effect reforms. Their majority soon split up into warring factions. Congress spent the session of 1848 in quarrelsome debates; the fall of Louis Philippe had diffused a spirit of revolution in the air; the munic.i.p.al elections were accompanied by riots, and the ministry itself deliberately encouraged a renewal of the anti-Portuguese agitation. The Emperor thought himself obliged to intervene, and appointed a Conservative Cabinet. In Pernambuco the new Conservative governor displaced the Liberal officials who had been holding office for the last three years. The latter were anti-Rio and anti-Portuguese, and they and their partisans started an insurrection known as that of the _praieiros_. It quickly a.s.sumed a formidable character and as many as two thousand revolutionists took part in a single battle, but after three months of fighting they were completely defeated. Little difficulty was experienced in restoring public order.

The movement had been rather a partisan uprising than a general popular revolution.

This was the last attempt for more than forty years to establish a federal system. The necessities of the stormy period from 1827 to 1848 had led, step by step, to a form of government which was centralised and yet not absolute. The imperial system had been the result of a natural growth. When the fabric reached stability the professional ruling cla.s.ses feared to disturb it, and the people were too inert and indifferent to afford support to agitators and reformers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRINCESS ISABEL IN 1889.]

Agriculture, commerce, and industry advanced only slowly during the first eight years of Pedro's rule. The country was getting ready for the activity which followed. Great Britain's efforts to induce the Brazilian government to carry out its treaty obligations for the suppression of the slave-trade had been futile. In 1845 the British Parliament pa.s.sed the Aberdeen Bill, which authorised British men-of-war to capture slavers even in territorial waters. This measure was especially directed at Brazil, whose coast had become practically the sole market for the horrible traffic. The bill did not immediately effect its purpose, and the slavers made the most of the opportunity. In 1848 over sixty thousand negroes were imported into Brazil. Immigration from Europe had practically ceased with the expulsion of Pedro I. and the anti-foreign demonstrations of the Regency, but it now slowly began again. In 1843 Dom Pedro, being then not quite eighteen years old, was married by proxy to Theresina Christina, daughter of Francis, King of Naples. There is a tradition that the Emperor turned his back when he saw his bride's face.

Nevertheless, he made her a good husband. Their two boys died in infancy, but in 1846 Isabel was born, who still survives and lives in Paris with her husband, a grandson of Louis Philippe, and with her three sons, the eldest of whom is named for his grandfather and was twenty-seven years old in 1902.

CHAPTER XVIII

EVENTS OF 1849 TO 1864

After the final pacification of the country prosperity came with a rush.

In the six years from 1849 to 1856 foreign commerce more than doubled.

The circulating medium was brought to a sound basis. Coffee had doubled in value by 1850, and its culture was rapidly extended. The profits of sugar-raising had not risen in the same proportion, and Rio, So Paulo, and Minas drew slaves from the northern provinces. The decline of mining in the late years of the eighteenth century and the profitableness of sugar and tobacco during the great wars had made Maranho, Pernambuco, and Bahia overshadow the South for a time, but now the tide turned the other way. Brazil's drift has ever since been to the South.

The Emperor and government followed an enlightened and vigorous progressive commercial policy. The subjects of internal communication, of colonisation, of better steams.h.i.+p facilities, of the opening of public lands to settlement, of public instruction, of liberal treatment to foreigners, and of administrative and financial reforms were taken up intelligently. So far as the government was concerned the suspicious and jealous exclusive policy was abandoned, and large amounts of foreign capital began to be invested in commercial houses, preparing the way for the great government loans and railroad building soon to come. The British had the lion's share of the importing and the Americans of the carrying trade.

The history of Brazil for the next few decades contains examples of devotion, of high-mindedness, and of great capacities worthily employed, of which any country might well be proud. The higher officials as a rule left office poorer than they had entered it. However, in the lower ranks of the magistracy and the government departments there was much to be desired. The public service became more and more the one career sought by young men of ability. The mercantile and property-owning cla.s.ses in general kept out of politics. Only the landowning and slaveholding aristocracy owed a nominal allegiance to the two parties whose active members were the officeholders or those who hoped to become officeholders. The most promising and prominent young men were selected from the graduates of the universities, placed in the magistracy, thence to be promoted to the Chamber of Deputies, and to be governors of provinces. The final goal was a nomination to the senate, where, from the dignified security of a life position, the successful Brazilian politician watched the struggles of those below him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAMPAS OF THE RIO GRANDE.]

The bright young magistrates were preoccupied with their own ambitions and were not responsible to the people of the localities they happened to be governing for the moment. Real local interests were not studied.

Those who reached the highest positions applied their well-trained minds to larger problems, but their work was too much from above down--they produced admirable reports and framed admirable laws, but among the lazy magistracy and indifferent people the energy to put them into effect was too often wanting. But the level of political well-being rose noticeably, though fitfully. The Brazil of 1850 had progressed far beyond the Brazil of colonial times. Liberty of speech was unquestioned and unquestionable; arbitrary imprisonment had died out; the grosser forms of tyranny had vanished; property rights and the administration of civil justice had much improved. Judges no longer openly received presents from litigants, though the nation had not risen to the conception of a judiciary independent of the executive.

In 1850 the Emperor chose a new Conservative Cabinet, which proved the most efficient the country had known. Its first great act was to abolish the slave trade.

The year 1850 is also memorable as that in which the yellow fever began those terrible ravages on the Brazilian coast which have never since entirely ceased. The first epidemic is said to have been the worst which ever visited Rio. Two hundred persons fell sick daily, and the wealthier cla.s.ses were especially attacked. Among the victims was the great statesman, Bernardo de Vasconcellos, and many deputies, senators, and diplomatic representatives. Congress adjourned in terror. In the earlier epidemics the citizens of Rio were just as susceptible as foreigners.

Later, however, they acquired a relative immunity--an immunity which is not shared by Brazilians who have lived in non-infected districts.

Brazil and Argentina had agreed in 1828 that Uruguay should be an independent and neutral buffer state between them. But the Buenos Aireans never forgot that for geographical and historical reasons Uruguay naturally belonged to them. Rosas, the Argentine dictator, a.s.sisted the Oribe faction, which openly advocated entering the confederation, while the Rio Grande Brazilians who owned much property on the Uruguayan side of the border aided the Rivera faction.

To protect the property interests of its citizens and prevent Rosas from conquering Uruguay the Brazilian government quietly made military preparations and formed an alliance with the Rivera party and with Urquiza, the ruler of the province of Entre Rios, to which the dictator of Paraguay and the president of Bolivia gave a pa.s.sive adhesion. It amounted to a coalition to forestall Rosas's plan of uniting the whole of the old Viceroyalty and the Plate valley under his rule. Brazil was virtually the instigator of a combination of the weaker Spanish-American states against the strongest one.

Urquiza crossed the Uruguay, and with the aid of the Brazilian troops made short work of Oribe's army, which was besieging Rivera in Montevideo. Rosas responded with a declaration of war and began collecting a formidable army. Urquiza resolved to carry the war to the gates of Buenos Aires. The allies gathered in camp on the left bank of the Parana, a hundred miles above Rosario, a great army which numbered four thousand Brazilians, eighteen thousand Argentines, mostly from the half-Indian provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, and a contingent of Uruguayans. A Brazilian fleet under Admiral Grenfell had penetrated up the Parana and protected their crossing of the great river. On the 17th of December they got safely over the Parana, and out of the low country of Entre Rios on to the dry pampas of the right bank. Thence they marched down on Buenos Aires, where Rosas was awaiting them. On the 3rd of February, 1852, he gave them battle in the suburbs of that city. He was completely defeated and fled to England.

Brazil found herself in a peculiarly advantageous situation. The war had cost her little in money or men. Buenos Aires might no longer hope to dominate the other Argentine provinces, and seemed likely to offer small resistance to the unified and centralised empire. Uruguay's independence of Buenos Aires, and Brazil's preponderance in Montevideo were a.s.sured.