The South American Republics Volume I Part 19

The Rio Grandenses flocked over the border, bought large amounts of property, and enjoyed peculiar privileges, while the Uruguayan government accepted subsidies from that of Brazil.

The country's commercial development continued even more rapidly after the war. In 1853 the Bank of Brazil was authorised to issue circulating notes, and the expansion of credit stimulated business. The same year the Conservative ministry, which had so brilliantly governed the nation since 1848, was forced to resign on account of the constant interference by the Emperor. It was replaced by the "Conciliation Cabinet"--whose chief, the Marquis of Parana, adopted the policy of admitting Liberals to administrative positions. He remained in power until 1858, and his name will always be a.s.sociated with one of the most prosperous epochs in Brazilian history. The first railway systems were inaugurated; the receipts of the treasury grew fifty per cent.; European immigration amounted to twenty thousand a year; private wealth and luxury increased; and numerous theatres, b.a.l.l.s, and social reunions furnished an indication of the rise of the level of culture.

One of Brazil's reasons for entering on the war against Rosas was to open up the navigation of the Paraguay, Parana, and Uruguay, upon which she depended for access to a large part of her territory. The treaties made at the conclusion of the war a.s.sured, against her protest, free navigation to all nations. Brazil has intermittently attempted to confine the navigation of the international rivers of South America to the nations having territory on their banks.

Parana's "conciliation" policy seems to have suited the Emperor very well, although it tended to hamper the development of two great parties in clearly defined opposition to each other. The elections came more and more under the control of the bureaucracy and were mere ratifications of selections made by the ministers. Congress lost rather than gained in influence, and the whole system became steadily more centripetal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD MARKET IN SO PAULO.]

From 1849 the country had been having prosperous times, but in 1856 the inevitable commercial crisis came. Prosperity had brought about extravagances in governmental administration; the budgets showed deficits; foreign loans were resorted to; the currency fluctuated violently. Brazil entered upon seven lean years, during which foreign trade remained stationary, the revenues increased only at the cost of heavy impositions, and the public debt grew. With the death of the Marquis of Parana in 1858 the regular Conservatives returned to power.

He had been the dominant figure in politics since the Regency, and his personal prestige and the confidence the Emperor reposed in him had had much to do with holding the government together during the panic. But the new ministry could not make headway against the difficulties. A new currency law was necessary, but the mercantile and speculating cla.s.ses bitterly opposed the rigid measures proposed by successive Cabinets.

Parana's neutral policy had given the opposition a hold in some of the most important provinces, and the following elections showed a vast increase in the number of Liberals and of dissident Conservatives.

Conservative Cabinets succeeded each other rapidly from 1858 to 1862.

The opposition to a contraction of the currency grew in force, and the dissidents and Liberals finally obtained a majority. The Emperor at last called upon the leader of the dissident Conservatives--Zacarias--to form a government. But he was as powerless as his predecessors, and as a last resort the Emperor temporarily gave up the effort to govern after the English system, and selected a Cabinet outside of the Chamber of Deputies.

The elections of 1863 resulted in a complete defeat of the Conservatives, but the victorious Liberals did not need to pa.s.s any radical currency legislation. Hard times had disappeared by the operation of natural law. The bank-notes approached par and the budgets nearly balanced. With 1864 the country entered upon a new era of prosperity. The production of coffee had doubled from 1840 to 1851, and then had remained stationary. But with the cessation of the Civil War in the United States an era of high prices was inaugurated which coincided with Brazil's financial rehabilitation, and stimulated planting.

Although real activity in the building of railroads did not begin until after the Paraguayan war, four short lines had been started before 1862.

The years of peace and order had disaccustomed the people to the thought of violence, and a steady advance had been made toward government by law. The highly educated statesmen placed by the Emperor at the head of affairs understood the most important principles of good government and tried conscientiously to put them in practice. In transportation, banking, posts, and telegraphs, commercial methods, etc., the improvements of modern civilisation were easily introduced, though in agriculture the indolence of proprietors and the apathetic ignorance of the slaves prevented any rapid advance.

On the whole, Brazil had made greater political and industrial progress when the Paraguayan war broke out than any other South American country, though grave vices remained to hamper her further development. The ma.s.s of the people were apathetic and ignorant; slavery tended to discredit industrious habits, at best so difficult to maintain in the tropics; the upper cla.s.ses showed little interest in or apt.i.tude for commercial matters: commerce, banking, railroads, mining, and engineering prospered only where foreigners personally engaged in them. The people themselves, in spite of the enlightenment of the educated cla.s.ses, showed little initiative or energy.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PARAGUAYAN WAR

Brazilian statesmen might well have been pardoned if, in 1865, they had claimed for their country the hegemony of South America. The result of the war against Rosas had been brilliant; the Argentine had only just emerged from half a century of civil war; Uruguay was almost a Brazilian protectorate; Brazil's internal condition was settled; in concentration of power, as well as in wealth, population, and extent, she was at the head of the continent. With the republics on the west she maintained good relations, while all the time she was firmly pressing her territorial claims on toward the foot of the Andes. She even attempted to control the navigation of the great waterways of South America.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOVERNOR'S PALACE IN SO PAULO.]

In 1863, Flores, a defeated chief, returned from Buenos Aires and set up the standard of revolt in Uruguay. Penetrating as far as the Brazilian border he received a.s.sistance, and Aguirre, the Montevidean president, protested. At the same time the latter ruler refused to settle certain claims on behalf of Brazilian citizens which the Rio government had been pressing. The Emperor decided to intervene and help Flores, and thereupon sent a man-of-war up the Uruguay River, which blockaded a port and destroyed Uruguayan public property. Aguirre declared war, and Brazil and Flores in alliance besieged and took the princ.i.p.al towns in western Uruguay. The Argentine received satisfactory a.s.surances and remained neutral.

This high-handed adjustment of Uruguayan affairs furnished a pretext to the Paraguayan dictator, Francisco Lopez, to intervene in his turn.

Under a line of vigorous dictators who concentrated all the forces of the nation into their own hands, that country had become menacing to the loosely organised Argentine Republic. Lopez even thought he was strong enough to bid defiance to Brazil. The tyrant was, in fact, an impossible neighbour for the two more progressive and civilised powers. For years he had been preparing for war and at the moment was stronger in a military way than either of his bulky neighbours. He hated both Argentines and Brazilians, and his people had been taught to despise the courage of the latter. Though Brazil's intervention in Uruguay was a matter in which he had an interest, a dignified protest would have obtained ample a.s.surances that the latter's independence would be respected, for there is no evidence that the imperial government intended to do anything more than to replace its enemy Aguirre by the friendly Flores. But the arrogant tyrant wanted to draw the world's attention to himself. He appreciated how difficult it would be for Brazil to send an army against him and how much more difficult it would be to maintain one, and he also knew that she was unprepared to undertake a serious war on foreign soil.

Without any declaration of war, in the fall of 1864 he seized a Brazilian steamer which was making its regular trip up the Paraguay River to Matto Grosso. The crew were imprisoned, and only the intervention of the American minister saved the lives of the Brazilian minister and his family. This outrage left Brazil no alternative. Lopez followed up the seizure of the boat by an expedition up the Paraguay River against Matto Grosso, and easily conquered the princ.i.p.al southern settlements in that province.

The geographical position of the Argentine made her att.i.tude of decisive importance to both belligerents. Uruguay and the southern provinces of Brazil were separated from Paraguay by the Argentine provinces of Corrientes and the Missions. Argentina had favoured Flores's pretensions, and Lopez was so obnoxious that the secret sympathies of Buenos Aires were with Brazil. Further than neutrality, Mitre, then president of Argentina, would not go. He declared that no permission would be given either belligerent to cross Argentine territory with troops. Lopez was made desperately angry at this refusal; he thought he could count on the alliance and support of Urquiza, the virtually independent ruler of the province of Entre Rios and Mitre's enemy, and seems to have believed that he might as well finish up with both Argentina and Brazil at one sitting. In March, 1865, he deliberately declared war on the Argentine, and eighteen thousand Paraguayan troops crossed the Parana and began offensive operations against Corrientes, Uruguay, and Brazil.

Instead of rising against Mitre, Urquiza declared himself against the Paraguayan dictator, and as his province of Entre Rios controlled access to Paraguay by water, Lopez found that the only result of his rash act was to open up the way by which his enemies could most conveniently reach him. On the first of May, 1865, a formal alliance was made between Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Mitre was agreed upon as commander-in-chief; the allies promised not to lay down their arms until Lopez should be overthrown and expelled from Paraguay; and pledges were given to respect Paraguay's independence. Of the three allies Brazil was the only one which could be expected to give its whole force. Flores could only answer for the colorado faction of Uruguay. Argentina did not represent much more than Buenos Aires. Entre Rios was Urquiza's, and the other outside provinces had no great interest in the result.

Nevertheless, the alliance was very advantageous to Brazil. It would have been well-nigh impossible to wage a successful war against an enemy shut up in the middle of the continent, and accessible only by a three-months' march across nearly impa.s.sable country, or by tedious navigation up a single river running through a third country, and where an army would have to be disembarked direct from s.h.i.+ps on the enemy's soil. The adhesion of Argentina made an aggressive war possible, and the event proved how hopeless would have been a campaign by Brazil alone.

The story of the military operations belongs to the history of Paraguay, and only those events which bore a direct relation to internal affairs in Brazil will be mentioned here. The successful naval battle of Riachuelo, on the Parana, just below the southern end of Paraguayan territory, in June, 1865, aroused great enthusiasm in Brazil. National feeling was hardly cooled by the news which soon followed of a Paraguayan invasion of Rio Grande, and rose again with the defeat of that invasion. Brazil's regular army numbered less than fifteen thousand men before the war, but at the Emperor's call fifty-seven battalions of volunteers were organised in the fall of 1865. A loan of five million pounds was arranged in London, and no expense was spared in fitting out the army and in strengthening the fleet. By the end of the war Brazil had eighty-five s.h.i.+ps, not counting transports, of which thirteen were ironclads. The voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Paraguay takes a month, and the transportation of men and material was tedious and extremely expensive. The government resorted to the issue of paper money, and outraged the feelings of the financial world by compelling the Bank of Brazil to give up the reserve it was maintaining for the redemption of its note issues. The premium on gold rose and the currency fluctuated wildly, although general trade continued to boom.

In September, 1865, the Paraguayan army which had invaded Rio Grande was captured in a body, and peace was confidently expected. Lopez, however, decided to fight it out to the bitter end, and it was April, 1866, before the allies could gain a foothold on Paraguayan soil. For the next six months Brazil was sickened with accounts of desperately b.l.o.o.d.y and indecisive battles, of which the last was an awful repulse before Curupayty. For more than a year thereafter the allies lay motionless in their camps in the south-western corner of Paraguay, while the cholera carried off thousands.

Though his favourite general, Marshal Caxias, was a Conservative, and not on good terms with the Liberal Cabinet, the Emperor insisted that he be sent to take command. Re-enforcements were vigorously recruited from all over the empire, and in July, 1867, the cautious Caxias began a slow advance. The expenses were mounting up to sixty millions a year; the country chafed at the delays, Caxias quarrelled with the ministers. In July, 1868, the Emperor dismissed them on his own responsibility, and, though the Liberals had still a large majority in the Chamber, called in a Conservative Cabinet. On this occasion the Emperor's pressure was not influential enough to change a minority into a majority, and the Chamber preferred dissolution to submission. Meanwhile Caxias had at last begun to win victories. The very month of the fall of the Liberals he took the great fortress of Humaita, which guarded the pa.s.sage up the Paraguay, and Lopez retreated to the neighbourhood of his capital accompanied by almost all the surviving Paraguayans. In November Caxias cleverly outflanked him and taking him in the rear compelled him to fight outside of his trenches until hardly any Paraguayans were left. By the beginning of 1869 Lopez was a fugitive, the Brazilians were in possession of Asuncion, and the war was over except for pursuing Lopez and the few starving soldiers who followed him through the woods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOSPITAL AND OLD CHURCH AT PORTO ALEGRE.]

Elections were held in March, but it was not worth while for the Liberals to make even the show of a contest. The Liberal leaders issued a manifesto declining to take any part, and, censuring the Emperor for calling the Conservatives to power against the known wishes of the majority of a legally elected Chamber, announced that they would respect the laws and would confine themselves to a non-parliamentary propagation of the doctrines of anti-absolutism, liberalism, and emanc.i.p.ation. From this time dates the systematic propaganda for the republic. The war ended with the Emperor's son-in-law hunting down the Paraguayan bands.

In March, 1870, Lopez was caught with the last few hundred men who remained faithful and speared by a common soldier as he tried to escape through the woods.

The war had cost Brazil three hundred million dollars and over fifty thousand lives. She had gained no substantial result except a.s.suring the safety of Matto Grosso and securing the free navigation of the Paraguay.

The Emperor did not attempt to use his victory by establis.h.i.+ng a hegemony over South America. Rather did the end of the Paraguayan war mark the beginning of a policy of systematic abstention from intermeddling with outside matters. Paraguay and Uruguay were left in full enjoyment of their independence, and the Argentine then began her marvellous industrial progress and political consolidation. The Plate republics reaped the benefits of the war, while Brazil bore its heaviest burdens. Most of the Argentine provinces had taken little part except to furnish provisions and horses at high prices, and the opening up of Paraguay redounded to the benefit of Buenos Aires and Montevideo--not to that of Rio. No spirit of imperialism spread among the Brazilian people, though they are still proud of the record their soldiers and sailors then made. Their bravery in field fighting and the a.s.sault of fortified places was proved beyond question, no matter how poorly they may have been commanded, and how deficient their organisation. The history of no war contains more examples of heroic and hopeless charges, or stories of more desperate hand-to-hand fighting. But a successful battle was followed by torpor; Brazilian tenacity was shown in the patience with which defeats were sustained, and in holding on month after month in camp, rotting in the miasmatic swamps, rather than in pursuing advantages obtained in the field.

CHAPTER XX

REPUBLICANISM AND EMANc.i.p.aTION

From 1808 to 1837 the tendency had been in the direction of democracy and decentralisation. Then the tide turned and from 1837 to the Paraguayan war the central government grew stronger and federalism weaker. The power of the Emperor reached its apogee in 1870. The senators had been personally selected by him and he could count on their grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p. Deputies were elected indirectly by electors chosen by a suffrage nominally universal, but the elections--primary and secondary--were mere farces, absolutely controlled by the ministry which happened to be in power. The local governors and magistrates, the officers of the national guard, and the police, all dependent on the central government for their positions, formed a machine against which opposition was useless. If intimidation was not sufficient, the baldest frauds were shamelessly resorted to--false polling lists, manufactured returns, and the seating of contestants by the majority in the Chamber or the returning boards. Of this system the Emperor was the real beneficiary, for the Cabinets held at his pleasure, and if the majority of a Chamber did not sustain a ministry which he desired to keep in power, all he had to do was to order a dissolution. But this hybrid system contained in itself the elements of sure decay. The Emperor was no arbitrary despot and neither wished nor would he have been able to govern in complete defiance of public opinion. On the other hand, the system afforded no sure method of ascertaining public opinion nor of throwing a proper responsibility upon well-organised political parties.

With the close of the Paraguayan war a series of movements began which ended twenty years later with the overthrow of the empire. Brazil's history during those twenty years is an account of the republican propaganda, the abolition movement, the attempt to reform the elections, the religious agitation, the growth of positivist doctrines, the demand for economic independence by the great provinces, and finally the infiltration of liberalism and insubordination into the army. This evolution, however, affected princ.i.p.ally the educated cla.s.ses. The ma.s.ses of the people were and still remain largely indifferent to the march of public events.

Commerce and industry continued to expand throughout the Paraguayan war.

From 1865 to 1872 the annual revenues doubled, and though in 1868 the emissions of paper money had reduced its value one-half, it steadily rose thereafter until in 1873 it again reached par. Just after the war the budget balanced, and the production of coffee rose one-half. But with relief from financial pressure the Conservative ministers became extravagant, and when the great world panic of 1873 came both government and country were badly caught. A foreign loan of five millions sterling made in 1875 was not enough to meet the mounting deficits. In 1878 new issues of paper money were resorted to, and exchange dropped, remaining below par for ten years in spite of a subsequent doubling of coffee production and a great increase in the value of exports. Population, however, which had increased from five to ten millions from 1840 to 1870, in the next twenty years mounted to fifteen millions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIDGE AT MENDANHA.]

The suppression of the slave trade by the Aberdeen Act and the Queiroz law made it probable that the inst.i.tution itself would ultimately disappear. Brazilian character and customs had always stimulated voluntary emanc.i.p.ation, and in Brazil the negro does not reproduce as rapidly as the white. In 1856 the slaves numbered two millions and a half, being nearly forty per cent. of the population, but in 1873 their number had fallen to 1,584,000, or only sixteen per cent. The inst.i.tution was, however, socially and politically very strong. Slaves furnished nearly all the labour employed in the production of staple exports, and it was believed that emanc.i.p.ation would be followed by agricultural collapse. But the Emperor was too enlightened a Christian and too susceptible to the good opinion of the civilised world not be at heart an abolitionist. However, it was only at the height of his influence that he deemed it wise to force the consideration of abolition on the reluctant nation. Agitation had begun modestly in 1864; in 1866 gradual emanc.i.p.ation was seriously proposed, but the breaking out of the war caused the matter to be adjourned. In 1869 Joaquim Nabuco, father of the present Brazilian minister to Great Britain, succeeded in virtually committing the Liberal party to emanc.i.p.ation. With the return of peace the question was taken up vigorously. The reactionary Conservative Cabinet resigned rather than be an instrument of the Emperor's wishes as to emanc.i.p.ation, and Pimenta Bueno was appointed Prime Minister for the especial purpose of getting a law through Congress declaring all children born thereafter free. This statesman failed, but Rio Branco, father of the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, was more successful.

After a bitter and prolonged parliamentary struggle, in which Rio Branco used every weapon that his position gave him in gaining and holding doubtful Congressional votes, the law was pa.s.sed in 1871. Thereafter all children born of slave mothers were free, though they remained bound to service until twenty-one. The proprietors were also required to register all their slaves. Under the influence of these measures the number of slaves decreased with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity--falling from 1,584,000 in 1873 to 743,000 in 1887.

Rio Branco's victory disrupted the Conservative party, and after achieving it he was unable to hold his majority together. The Chamber was dissolved, and though the new one supported him half-heartedly the old line Conservatives had become deeply dissatisfied with the radical tendencies of the government and the Emperor. Public men of all parties awoke to realisation of the inconsistency between the const.i.tution and the Emperor's personal power. Not much was said in the Chamber, but outside the republican propaganda a.s.sumed an active form, and the conviction fast crystallised that the empire could not last for many years. A republican press came into existence and a republican party was organised under the leaders.h.i.+p of Saldanha Marinho, an able lawyer of Rio. Republican societies were formed in all the centres of population, but there was no thought of armed revolution. There is, indeed, no evidence that the Emperor ever opposed the republican propaganda, though occasionally he detached some of its able members by promotions to office.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CITY OF OURO PRETO.]

In 1873, 1874, and 1875 the question which most absorbed public attention was the imprisonment of the bishops of Para and Pernambuco by the civil authorities. The lower ranks of the priesthood were uneducated, and real interest in religion had largely been confined to women and the lower cla.s.ses. With the growth of liberal ideas among the laity the Church awoke to the necessity of a reformation. These two bishops were leaders in this counter-movement, and they selected the Masonic Lodges as a point of attack. In spite of the nominal prohibition of the Church, Free-Masonry had been permitted in Brazil since 1821, and the lodges had become mere social clubs and philanthropic societies.

Free-Masons were members of those semi-religious brotherhoods which take charge of local church feasts and const.i.tute the most important link between the lay and spiritual worlds in Brazilian communities. The two militant bishops ordered that the brotherhoods should expel their Masonic members or suffer the penalty of losing their right to use the church edifices. Where these orders were not obeyed interdicts were laid. The progressive element and the magistracy took the side of the Masons, but the bishops were not without their supporters. The government insisted that the obnoxious interdicts be withdrawn: the bishops refused to yield, and were prosecuted in the civil courts and sent to prison. The Princess Isabel was believed to be on the priests'

side, and while the excitement gradually died out and things went on as before, a wider breach than ever had been created between the progressive and conservative cla.s.ses. Like the slave-owners devout Catholics now felt that they could no longer depend on the imperial system to protect them against the rising tide of radicalism.

The financial difficulties growing out of the great panic drove Rio Branco from power in 1875, and a succession of Conservative Cabinets struggled along until 1878. The question of electoral reform came to the front, for every one was sick of the absurd system in vogue, and the leaders of both the historical parties hoped for great things from a radical change. The Emperor was opposed to giving up the indirect method of voting, but was anxious to try some lesser reforms. On his return from the United States and Europe in 1877 he virtually instructed the Cabinet to put through a bill drawn after his suggestions, but the Prime Minister resigned because the Emperor insisted that the change could not be made by an ordinary statute, but must go through the tedious process of an amendment to the const.i.tution. The Emperor called in a Liberal Cabinet and a new Chamber was elected.

The Liberal ministry continued in power until 1880, and then fell, partly because it had lost its hold with the Liberal majority, and partly because of the riots in Rio over the street-car tax. A law had been pa.s.sed compelling each pa.s.senger to pay a cent in addition to the regular fare. The people refused, burned the cars, cut the harness in pieces, threw the conductors off, and fought the police until the business of the city was brought to a standstill. The Emperor called upon a cool and experienced politician, Jose Antonio Saraiva. But the latter refused to take office unless he should be allowed to push through the election bill in the form of an ordinary law. Right here the Emperor suffered a great defeat. He thought himself obliged to yield, and the vigorous minister at once secured the pa.s.sage of a radical law which completely transformed the electoral system. Suffrage was confined to the educated and property-holding cla.s.ses, but the electors voted directly for deputies, and the country was divided into districts each of which chose a single deputy. The electoral body was now permanent, and each deputy was responsible to a definite const.i.tuency. Saraiva resigned the moment his bill was enacted into law, and every precaution was taken to ensure that the election of 1881 should be free from any suspicion of official pressure. The result was a revelation to the small-bore politicians of the old regime. One hundred and fifty thousand voters registered out of an adult male population of about three millions, and ninety-six thousand voted. The new members were divided nearly equally between the two historical parties--the Liberals getting sixty-eight and the Conservatives fifty-four. Two ministers were defeated for re-election and many of the contests were decided by small majorities. In subsequent elections the Saraiva law proved not to be so effective, and since it is not in the Latin nature to be satisfied with gradual improvement, the liberal movement, of which the electoral law was a symptom, swept on with increasing violence until the beneficent law was uprooted along with the mistaken system on which it had been painfully grafted.

As soon as electoral reform was out of the way abolition became once more the dominant question in Brazilian politics. Though the majority of Liberals were abolitionists and the doctrine was one of the official principles of the party, the various Liberal Cabinets which succeeded each other from 1881 to 1884 managed to dodge the dangerous issue.

Finally the Dantas ministry faced it squarely. A bill was introduced prohibiting the sale of slaves, establis.h.i.+ng an emanc.i.p.ation fund, and freeing slaves as fast as they reached the age of sixty. A terrific parliamentary battle followed and the project was defeated by only seven votes--forty-eight Liberals and four Conservatives voting for it, and seventeen Liberals and forty-two Conservatives against. The Emperor dissolved the Chamber and the excitement over abolition became national.

The abolitionists subsidised newspapers, held public meetings, and marched through the streets in procession carrying pictures representing the torturing of slaves. No means were spared which might aid to rouse the national conscience. The negroes were advised to revolt, and a.s.sistance was openly promised to them. The elections of 1884 were violently contested, instead of being free from fraud and protest like those of 1881. Nor did the government so conscientiously abstain from interference. Nevertheless the Chamber elected did not differ materially in its composition from that which had preceded it. Sixty-five of the one hundred and twenty members of the new House were Liberals, but of these fifteen were opposed to abolition. For the first time avowed republican members were elected--three being returned, and two of them came from So Paulo--Prudente Moraes and Campos Salles, the first two Brazilians to hold office avowedly as republicans and who reaped their reward by becoming two decades later the first two civil presidents of the republic. No election was ever held in Brazil which was so earnestly contested and which const.i.tuted so genuine an expression of the wishes of the people. Nevertheless, on the main question--that of abolition--the result was apparently a drawn battle.

With the meeting of the Chamber in 1885 the agitation broke out afresh.

The crowds on the Rio streets hissed anti-emanc.i.p.ation deputies, and there was a bitter fight for the control of the organisation of the Chamber. It was soon evident that the Dantas ministry could not force abolition through, and it resigned. Saraiva was called in and he skilfully arranged a compromise. With the aid of Conservative votes he pa.s.sed a bill for gradual and compensated emanc.i.p.ation. This done, he resigned. The Liberal party was disorganised and dissatisfied with him, and he did not deem it worth his while to try and hold it together. The quarrelling Liberal majority was aghast when it was announced that a Conservative Cabinet would take the reins of government. The Emperor had begun to show decided symptoms of a failure of his mental powers and was ceasing to be a controlling factor in parliamentary affairs.

Saraiva's resignation further exacerbated the Liberal leaders against the imperial system, and at the same time continued to lose ground with the slaveholders.